


Malevolence

by Euregatto



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Foreshadowing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lots and Lots of Foreshadowing, M/M, Mystery, Psychological Trauma, Romance, Titan Shifters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:39:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1666721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last 29 months have broken the once close bonds amongst Squad Levi's soldiers, and subsequently, Eren's sense with reality. But now, Annie's sudden awakening has left obscured memories where the truth used to be. With the consequences set in motion and old enemies closing in, Eren is beginning to doubt who his real allies are, and what they aren't telling him…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dog Day Blues

_"_ Trust is built through actions, not words."

\- Chris Redfield _  
Resident Evil: Revelations_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

The darkness is consuming. Cold. Unforgiving. A void. Much like a Titan shift, it engulfs the body, devours the humanity in the host and births a genesis of malicious instinct, and then explodes into a billowing feeling of omnipotent essence. If he knew what Death is like, what it truly, genuinely feels like, he would call this Death. He would spit on it. He would wrap his fingers around Death's throat and make it beg him for mercy.

"Why won't you wake up?"

He's tired. Everything hurts. The void is threatening to draw him in once more, into the place where it is cold and unforgiving and silent. As reticent as she has been since the day he first tried to get her to speak to him. She's never been one for many words.

**All those words have been a lie**.

"I… need the truth now, I need… _need_ …"

The darkness is consuming him again, bringing with the void this abhorrent, mangled sound, something so truculent and hollowed it isn't human. A burst of lightning explodes through his chest, igniting fires through his blood, boiling, blistering, curdling him from the inside outside. When the noise bellows out again the darkness answers, binding him in the cold, unforgiving void, in the cold, _unforgiving_ –

_**I HATE YOU!** _

The noise. The screaming. Shredding from his throat, exploding through his lips with each burst of lightning in his chest. "I hate you! I hate y– _I hate you…!"_

He slams into the silence that is mocking him, with its frigid surface, protecting that virulent being of Death he cannot reach. The void is drawing him into unconsciousness. He hears the sizzling several seconds before the immense burning erupts in his wrists, and he tucks his arms beneath his chest, forcing his forehead against the floor. It's as cold and unforgiving as the darkness, as his shift, as her eyes. _As her_. Cruelly, he surrenders his humanity, cruelly, she takes it from him.

"I **_hate_** you, Annie…"

_Cold._

"I…need the…truth…"

_Silent._

"Please… wake up… _please_ …"

And then there is nothing. Nothing but the consuming void.

* * *

**MALEVOLENCE**

**Chapter 1: Dog Day Blues**

("The dog days are behind us." – Eren Jaeger, at the convocation in the royal court, regarding the re-establishment of the Scouting Legion)

* * *

Every evening in the last six months since Historia Reiss rose to power, Mikasa Ackerman finds her brother missing from the dinner table, the spot she tries to save for him between herself and Armin Arlert as vacant as the gorge sinking deep into her chest. Her blond best friend exchanges soothing words of reassurance that slither fruitlessly through her ears. Typical of him, to offer alternatives to a situation but opt out of physically applying himself to make a difference, but when she can get a hold of their now broken special operations squad, they will tell her similar bullshit so they don't have to bother with him themselves: "Eren's got a lot on his plate. Just let him be."

She wants to.

She can't. This is her _brother_ for fuckssake.

During the daylight hours Eren Jaeger is himself. He quarrels with Jean or wipes every window in their new castle or rides into town to run errands or lets their psychotic Scouting Legion commander study his blood. That's when he's normal, some will mention to her. And they're not wrong. Unfortunately, his sudden psychedelic meltdowns have put a chokehold on every expedition date to get him to his basement in Wall Maria. Historia is patient with him, and tends to her people in the meantime. The soldiers of the legion aren't as understanding and twice as irritable towards the topic of the hiatus. Some claim they don't need Eren. They just need the key.

He's as expendable as they are. But at least they're productive.

Mikasa tells herself to scream at each and every one of them for turning away from him in his time of greatest need, after everything he's done for the ungrateful bastards. They're right though. What could she possibly offer him in place of comfort: empty apologies, foreign words of sympathy, more chores to keep him occupied? She doesn't agree with any of her friends, but it isn't like they lack empathy, nor or they blind to the truth.

It's been two years since that day, but never before has he behaved this erratically. Only over the last few weeks has the screaming started. She'll hear the resounding howls of rage and intense shrieks of melancholy reverberating through the very walls, originating from the sublevel dungeons where they're keeping the crystal now. In the beginning she used to race down every flight of steps almost four at a time with Levi or Armin or Hange close behind, and they would find him, a crumpled heap on the floor at the foot of the crystal, ranting hysterically and both wrists visibly broken from punching the seamless face of the prison with no result.

"Get out!" He would screech, the shrill noise piercing through her chest like a spear, striking fear straight into her core like no Titan ever could.

The first time she made an attempt to coax him to come with her, but he shoved her away, gave her a threatening, almost primal glare that has burned itself into her retinas. It was a horrifying, inhumane image that mirrors the grotesque grin of a Titan, _predatory_ , like she wasn't his sister, but a human to be devoured. "I said. _Get. **Out**._ "

Levi was with her. He took her arm, towed her out, and spent nearly two hours letting her cry against him, offering no verbal sympathies aside from a gentle shushing that he muffled in her hair.

Eren became unrecognizable after that.

The second time he screeched at them to leave, she was with Commander Hange Zoe who put her foot down, something Mikasa used to do until Eren became someone unrecognizable, and demanded he stop destroying himself like this. It would have worked on the old Eren. It would have snapped him back to his senses. Instead he screamed into the cobblestone floor, and the underlying tone of his voice warped with a dangerous roar of a Titan, commanding utter fear and total silence amongst them. He fell unconscious a moment later.

Mikasa vowed, as per Hange's request, to never speak of it again.

And the third time, she was with Armin. He tried to help Eren to his feet but received an acute punch directly to the face instead. It broke his nose, leaving him grounded for three weeks until the swelling went down enough that he could actually see again. Eren had apologized the following morning after the incident, but claimed he didn't remember it happening - in fact, he didn't remember most of what happened to him on those nights. Jean passed Mikasa an off-handed remark about the rising trust issues in Eren as a soldier of humanity, and where, exactly, his loyalties lied. She knows no one blames him for this.

She knows they might be starting to.

Every time after that, for the first two months, Mikasa rushed down to make sure he hadn't ended up killing himself by charging his head into the damn impenetrable crystal to free the being within, but it was always, always by herself – they didn't lack the courage to bother him, they just had more common sense than she did. One day, she stopped going altogether, finally realizing what everyone else understood that she never did.

She wants to help him.

She can't.

She wants someone, anyone, to help him, even asks Queen Historia and Hange and their team's captain.

They can't.

Every night following, after the inhuman yelling has died down for a solid hour, she watches him through the gap she leaves between her bedroom door and the frame, when he returns with blood steaming up from his hands as the fractures in his bones amend themselves and the splits in his flesh seal shut. He hasn't gotten much taller over the last twenty-nine months since she first watched him collapse into a hollowed shell of the boy he used to be, his hair grown out scruffy like his Titan form's, muscle physique comparable to that of Levi's now. But he's looking thin. He rarely eats. She's pointed that out before. He doesn't seem to care.

His days consist of chores. His nights, of screaming. His sleep… of nightmares.

Sometimes, before the crack of dawn, she hears him calling out to someone - Mother, Father, Hannes, the traitors Reiner Braun and Bertholdt Hoover, and of course, Annie Leonhardt. Tonight he wakes up shouting for Annie, at Annie, accusing her of incoherent horrors, but Mikasa promptly rolls over and pretends not to hear. She gave up comforting him months ago, when she found out he keeps his door locked at night and will never answer it for anyone. Not even her. "Please go away," he pleaded through the thick panel dividing them, and she never came back.

But he's not alone. Sometimes they all have nightmares they would prefer not to talk about.

Historia will dream of Ymir. She'll see the Dancing Titan shifter standing on the edge of Wall Maria, her face to the horizon, her back to the blonde. Historia calls out to her but she doesn't seem to hear. And then she'll step right over the edge - the queen wakes up with a start, the tears rolling silently down her cheeks.

Armin, of his grandfather. He will stand in the wreckage of the failed attempt to gather supplies from Wall Maria, walking aimlessly through the mountains of carnage and mangled, broken, faceless carcasses that appear almost like marionettes, too surreal to be factual. He'll find his grandfather in a pool blood, and when he awakens, he spends the rest of the night disorganizing and reorganizing the contents of his room for the sake of keeping himself busy through sunup.

Connie, of Reiner and Bertholdt. No one knows what he dreams about, however. When asked, he passively answers with the names of the murderous Titan duo at large. That's all they need to know.

Sasha, of fighting a Titan with only one arrow. She doesn't talk about it, like she didn't talk about it then – it's something she buried in her past, along with the nightmare of Trost and the ride in Maria that nearly got them all killed. On those days her eyes are clouded, gaze on the floor. Mikasa brushes her fingers through the girl's lengthy ponytail almost soothingly when they pass in the hall, but she doesn't stop long enough to look back and see the smile that's settled on Sasha's lips.

Jean will dream of trying to save Marco, and wonders why he never noticed Annie and Marco had split from his group together back in Trost. "Annie might not have killed him," he told Mikasa at breakfast one day almost a full year ago, "but I know the bitch had _something_ to do with it. When she wakes up, that's the only answer I'm getting out of her, even if I need to break open every one of her bones to find it."

Annie Leonhardt torments Eren Jaeger, and subsequently, them all. The anger and confusion each of them has felt for her on any individual level has collectively transgressed into a hate so bitter and deep it rots their souls from the core out to their shell like a corrosive acid. But Mikasa will defiantly face her nightmares head-on. She will not let Annie win. She drives forward with this hate, wielding it as her swords, not her shield from reality.

In the morning she doesn't remember her dream. Eren is so, so obviously haunted by his.

"When will it end?" she asks him when she catches him by her elbow in the hall the next morning, and he turns his weary gaze to meet her own placid expression. "When will you stop hurting yourself like this?"

He laughs at that, a cruel, belittling, hollowed sound. It sends a chill down the length of her spine.

"When she wakes up, so I can hurt her as well."

.

.

.

_I am Annie Leonhardt._

She doesn't remember where she is, only that her body feels like it is floating, suspended in a frozen lapse of time so she does not need breath, nor food or water. All she knows is that she must remember who she is, what she is, where she's from, what she's done… because that's important. It's all important. An objective. A motive. A murder fueling the hysteria in her mind and the direness of the situation at hand.

She doesn't know how to wake up from this. She doesn't know how long she's been sleeping. She can't remember her beginning, or the full arc of time between her earliest recollection to her most recent, like puddles of coalescing thoughts and erroneous emotions and intemperate happenings that are evaporating into the dark berths of her mind.

Her memories are slipping from puddles into effervescent brines, her truth obscured by faces that are unfamiliarly familiar, by the forgotten titillation of the wind in her hair, by a forlorn sense of insecurity and falsified words searing the tip of her tongue.

She cannot recall how much she does not remember. That scares her more than what's awaiting her outside this abyss.

Like the voice. The voice is awaiting her.

_I hear you, Voice. Quite often you scream at me. Anger. Hate. Bitterness. I can sense it all on you. You're so familiar to me._

In a last attempt to calm down the Romanesque heartbeat she can hear in her ears, she thinks about _him_ , tall and slender and all work no play. Wonders about those vicious green eyes like erenite moss that consume her in raw passion. She can hear him screaming in her memories.

**_Why, Annie?_ **

_Why what, Voice?_

**_Why did you do this?_ **

_Do what? I don't even know where I am anymore._

**_Come back to me Annie!_ **

_I am… Annie Leonhardt._

She doesn't know how long she's been sleeping.

_I am… Annie…_

But the more she tries to keep her mind alive, the less responsive it becomes. And all she can focus on is that strange set of green eyes that sets fire to her chest. As she falls asleep once again, it is to the shrill screaming that she hears more and more often these days, agony consigned to oblivion.

_I am…_

_I… am…_

_…I…want to wake up now…_

Something cracks.

.

.

.

_He is awake._

Eren stirs against the floor, hissing in recoil as his swollen wrists throb when he applies pressure in attempt to peel himself from the frigid stone tier. The renewed bones he had fractured strain beneath his weight, but he's accustomed to the pain by now, and the scent of burned flesh has thankfully abandoned the stale air. His throat is raw. He swallows – an immense burn, like liquid fire snaking down the length of his chest.

_Awake in this cruel, ever-present world._

He utilizes his elbows to prop himself up, forcing him up to his knees. Everything is suddenly much clearer to him than before, even though he is unaware of just how long he's been consumed in the void of unconsciousness.

"Why, Annie?" he chokes out, glancing at the massive crystal to his side. He sounds coarse. Thirsty. Everything hurts. "Why won't you wake up? I need you… I need to _know_ …"

_Swallow. **Burning**_.

"I need the truth!"

The acute sound of shattering, splintering, crumbling structure jolts a newfound alertness and clarity into his body. He knows immediately, by the chunks of diamond that crash to the floor with a deafening chorus of _bangs_ , that Annie has heard him – that Annie Leonhardt is finally waking up. But even as the adrenaline compels him to stand his legs are threatening to give out.

He crawls towards her. "Annie."

The crystal is sliding away from her body, unveiling her preserved body, the un-aged, untouched girl. Her eyelids flicker when the translucent gem breaks away from her face, her torso – letting her fall forward – suspended by her arms, her legs.

_"Annie."_

And the prison releases her.

**_"ANNIE!"_ **

He catches her against his chest, slamming into the floor on the jagged mass of crystals that demolish to dust beneath the impact. Diamonds cannot shatter but these ones destroy themselves, consuming their own existence, like her Titan shift. _Like her._

He forces himself to sit upright, cradling her head against his chest, adjusting her in his lap. Her eyelids are still fluttering, almost like she's struggling to keep herself awake (and out of that horrible nightmare of screaming and pathetic whispers of the things she lost). "Annie?" he mutters, gently patting her cheek. "Hey… wake up. It's me. It's Eren." He leans his ear to her lips, testing her breathing. "Annie, it's me…"

_"It's quiet…"_

He draws back. "Ann…?"

Her eyes draw open, pupils dilating as they adjust to the first light she's seen in a long, long time. And then she gasps, pushing away from him, scooting back in panic until she hits the wall. "I did what you wanted!" she screams, curling her legs up against her chest, tucking her forehead to her knees. "You killed my mother, you lying fuck! You promised you'd let me go home! I did - I did what you told me to!"

"Annie!" He exclaims, drawing up to her quickly. She jolts in place and presses her hands to either side of her head to drown out her own wailing. He kneels down only several inches away. "Calm down! It's just me! It's just Eren!"

"You killed her! _You lied to me!"_

"ANNIE! It's me! It's Eren!"

After a beat of sudden silence she allows her eyes, glazed with tears, to return to looking at him, gazing through his very being. "I don't," she starts timidly, swallowing the dry lump in her throat, "I…"

"You don't what?" he presses, gently grasping her shoulders to still her.

She relaxes into his touch. It's so unfamiliarly familiar to her. " _Eren_ … I'm sorry, I don't… I don't know that name."

Something in him breaks. _Shatters_. Like crystal.

_"I don't know who you are."_

.

.

.

Tonight is like all nights before, but Mikasa cannot sleep. She lays awake for some time, admiring the dancing shadows on her walls, before she stuffs on her boots and treks silently through the castle halls. The door on the left only two corridors down is ajar, the flickering flame of candlelight casting a dancing amber glow across the floor and adjacent wall, overlaid with disruptive shadows.

Levi Ackerman has always been a man of blunt words, false façades and crude humor… if humor could even be the appropriate term for his literally shitty jokes. So after learning of his past as an orphan adopted into her family's branches by her murderous, brother-napping great-uncle, she realized that if they were going to get along, she would have to accept him and all his stoic silence.

Naturally, as if he isn't even aware of it himself, his eyes betray his actions. His emotions run deeper than his family ties and thicker than blood, boiling behind the dark films like fire. That's how Mikasa knows when to approach or steer away, by the anger or amusement in his steely gaze.

Blood relative or not, and it is _not_ , she's seeking comfort, and with all the high-strung tension in her team now-a-days, it feels like Levi is the last man she can trust. And whether he's riddled with animosity or placidity, she's getting his council.

As she enters his office, not even bothering to alert him to her presence, she can see the anger in him as he apathetically stares down at the letters on his desk – signed by his old team, the soldiers she didn't know very well, with names she barely recalls and features as distinguishable in her mind as the flattened face of stone. She wonders if he feels the same way about Annie for doing this as she does about Annie nearly slaughtering Armin and Jean and kidnapping Eren.

(If he wants to cut Annie's pretty little head from the perch of her shoulders.)

"Haven't you ever heard of knocking?" he asks as more of a fact than a question, folding up the letter in his grasp and tucking all four back into the envelope he keeps in the bottom drawer of his desk. "And what are you doing up at such God awful hours of the night?"

"As if you don't sleep?"

Levi blows air out his nose in a way that could pass as a snort. Suddenly, they hear it – Eren's faint screaming, barely audible from this far up, blood-chilling, broken, _inhuman_. Mikasa visibly tenses, but they both know there is nothing either can do for him, so the man gestures to the chairs across from him. "Take a seat."

"Thank you, Levi," she utters as she occupies the right chair, because everyone knows the left emits insufferable squeaks when shifting beneath any amount of weight.

"That's _General_ to you, Ackerman."

" _General_ , only when on the clock."

Levi doesn't respond. Normally he would appreciate her choice of irking humor over her usual cold-shoulder personality, but tonight he's not quite in the mood to endure either and opts for changing the subject instead. "Are you worried about Eren?"

She rings her hands in the lap of her night gown. "Of course."

"Do you blame him for his turmoil?"

"No," she answers half-heartedly. "I blame _her_ , for everything she's done to him…" She leans back in her seat, her posture pushing her chest forward and head back. Levi's eyes glimpse her lithe form once over, drawing up quickly and landing intently on the lower plush of her roseate lips. "…and to you, _General_."

She's mocking him. "How thoughtful."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

Mikasa purses her lips before reaching across the desk and scooping up a stack of files, drawing back when he slaps his hand down to stop her, but subsequently meets the unforgiving surface of his desk. She briskly flips through the papers; they detail the records of the new recruits they had received this year, including those rejected from the Garrison due to filling. "These are completely out of order. One would think that a famous General of your standing would keep these organized."

"That's what I was in the middle of doing." _Infuriating brat._

Mikasa shuffles the papers around, sorting them alphabetically with an almost expert precision. "I was wondering something…" She waits a moment, studying Levi's expression from over the top of the sheets, but his attention hasn't wavered: her permission to continue. "What are we going to do about Eren?"

"What does it matter?"

She fiddles absently with the pages, double checking, shuffling, rifling through to make sure they're in perfect order. "Lately his self-destructive habits have been putting a wedge between him and the rest of us. Jean's been addressing some particular concerns over Eren's liability to the Legion. Armin has developed a habit of reminding me how much time we're wasting waiting on Eren to come around. Sasha and Connie have been fighting consistently, sometimes over the dumbest things like bumping into each other in the hall, and they used to be inseparable."

"You're all insufferable little shits." He receives the sorted files and thumbs through them briefly, as if to check for mistakes, before setting them down on the ten inch thick stack to his right. "It's my job to be your captain, not your babysitter. If you can't handle the stability of your friends, let alone your own brother, all of you can get the hell off my team. I'll hire some _competent_ soldiers to take this job."

The sudden surge of anger cleaves a gorge deep into her chest. "Like your last team?" she hisses, lacing every word with potent venom that poisons the memories of the felled soldiers, each for each, festering like an infected wound.

Levi visibly tenses.

Mikasa knows she's hit a nerve – and the familiar vexation he's always managed to irk within her takes the reigns, manifesting in her speech, in her stiffening, in her eyes, with a single snap of the belts. "Because they were _so_ competent and did _such_ a great job at protecting Humanity's only hope?"

"Don't you _fucking_ -"

"At least _we're_ all still _alive_."

He slams his fist down, forcing the papers to jump and scatter in fright. They sail to the floor all around him. He makes no immediate move to pick them up, and instead lets the silence blanket them in a veil of discomfort. "Don't you _dare_ chastise me like it's your goddamn birthright," he seethes, "especially when you clearly lack a solid definition of the term _team_. At least my last group could operate without the ever-present urge to throw each other under a stampede."

"It's your job to keep us together!"

"It's my _job_ , Ackerman, to get your asses to the basement in Shigashina, regardless if you're all in one piece or not. And the outcome certainly isn't dependent on which of you dies at the hands of a Titan or, in this particular case, _each other_. As a matter of fact, in the eyes of the government you're all expendable. My _job_ is only to get _Eren_ there regardless on how many of you get eaten in the process."

She's clutching her gown to the point that her knuckles are bleeding white.

Levi notices almost instantly and recollects his nerves, pressing his forefingers to the depressions of his temples. "Now call me heartless if you see it fit, but you know I'm right. I don't say these things to be crude, _Mikasa_ , only to give you a reality check."

She cedes her misplaced rage and diverts her glare to the floor, crossing one arm across her chest to grasp her elbow. "My apologies."

"I don't want them. Just know your place."

For several minutes neither moves; they barely bother to look at each other. Levi's cleanly tendencies finally coerce him to get up and gather the spilled papers, placing them haphazardly onto his desktop. Mikasa bites down her rising urge to apologize again, properly this time, as she hardly knew Levi's original team but that did not give her the right to speak so poorly about them, but as luck would have it, Levi is the first to shatter the quiet.

"I'm not saying that I don't care about you or the rest of the group. I've just found it easier to handle this position by detaching my personal feelings from my work life. There is no room to make any other errors." He's referring to his old team, to the soldiers he let die at the hand's of Kaney Ackerman, to Erwin Smith. "You aren't children anymore. There is no more hand-holding. I must treat you as adults and as soldiers, but I cannot be your friend."

"I know," she mutters empathetically, "you are better than that. I trust you to know what's right, Levi."

He suspires his held breath to relieve himself of his frustration. "You're lucky I can never stay mad at you."

She flashes him a bemused smile from over the intrusive bulk of her scarf. "I did take a bullet to the side for you."

His gaze frisks her again, finding the stretch of her torso just above her hip that he knows harbors a massive explosion of a scar. He forces the image of Kaney Ackerman into the back of his mind but subconsciously wipes his hands across the front of his shirt like her blood is still sticking to them, even after all this time. "And you made me break my damn ankle. Save your entitled bullshit for someone you can manipulate with it."

_**"Levi!"** _

Mikasa shoots up out of her chair as the familiar voice echoes down the hallway. Levi paces passed her towards the door, but no sooner does he reach the threshold that Eren slams into the wooden frame, heaving for air, leaning on one arm to keep himself upright.

"Eren," Levi mutters, attempting to take the boy by the shoulder, but Eren slaps his gesture away. "Eren, what the Hell is wrong with you?"

"It's"—he gasps, pressing back against the lining—"fuck, I wasn't prepared for this!"

"Prepared for what? Eren, _look at me_."

The shifter turns his head to them weakly, and suddenly Mikasa can see him in the light she's been blind to before. His hair is untamed and more closely resembles the Rogue Titan's rather than the unkempt spikes that used to wave back and forth with passion and vigor. His light five-o-clock shadow frames his face, bringing out the dull ache of forgotten self-image in the forest of his eyes. She barely recognizes him.

"I just wanted her to wake up," he whispers, pressing his palm to the right side of his face. "I didn't expect… I didn't – didn't _think_ , I never _think!_ "

"Eren," Levi tries again, snapping his fingers to get the boy's attention. "Tell me what happened!"

"Annie woke up-"

A blood-curdling chill rockets through the room like a bolt of lightning.

"-and I fucked up… _I fucked up…_ "

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._


	2. Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline

Visions of the past  
Engraved to the bone  
We bury our dead  
Until they find you out  
There's nowhere to go

\- Koda  
 _Mikis_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

* * *

**MALEVOLENCE**

**Chapter 2:** **Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline**

("No dreams, only rage and body pyres." – Jean Kirschtein, in regards to the inquires of recent nightmares induced by stress, anger, and regret)

* * *

_"You're lying to me!"_

_The tears are streaming down her face. He's grasping her shoulders to keep her pinned against the wall as he screams over her, the years of pent up grievance and scorn and animosity exploding through his every vein. She is that innocent girl again – the trainee that was ruthless by nature but propitious in her heart, toxic with her words but kind with her lips – but he will not let her win him over, not again, not after all the nightmares she's tormented him with and the people she's killed._

_(Butchered Petra and Erd and Auruo and Gunter like swine to the slaughterhouse)._

_"Please," she pleads as she tries to shrink back, disappear into the wall, and fade from his life once more. A mysterious entity that exists outside of his reality. He can_ touch _her but he cannot_ feel _her. "I don't know what you're talking about!"_

_"STOP LYING TO ME! That's all you've ever done is **lied** to me!"_

_"What are you – I don't"—she suffocates on a sob that claws through her closing throat—"I don't,_ don't _– I don't know what you want!"_

 _"I_ want _the truth, Annie, I_ want _…" He chokes on an acute inhale of breath, and his exhale comes shakily. "I just want the truth… I need to know."_

_"Know what?" she whispers, with her toxic words that slither through kind lips and eyes that wither him cruelly, like spearing decalescent icicles through his chest again, and again, and again, and **again** for every soldier he's failed to save because of her. _

_"You know what I want…"_

_"I don't… remember what you want. I don't remember. **I don't remember!"** She grasps either side of her throbbing skull and gradually sinks to the floor – and he lets her fall, just like before – as her words become hysterical. Repetitive. "I don't remember… I don't remember…"_

_Honest._

_"I don't remember…"_

_Her forgotten thoughts become the truth._

**_"I don't remember…"_ **

_And all the broken pieces of himself that he's scraped together just to keep the tendrils of his sanity alive – they crumble to nothingness alongside her memories._

.

.

.

The next morning comes too quickly, Mikasa thinks, but she doesn't dare bother to say anything about it to break the terse silence already situated amongst every present body in the room. She fiddles with the tails of her scarf instead, waiting peevishly for someone to speak up before her, and realizes that the cause of their awkward tension is the fault of the blonde Titan Shifter sitting just out of earshot of Levi's gathered squad.

"That's absolute bullshit."

 _And there it is_. Of course Jean would be the person to get the first word in.

Six pairs of eyes watch Annie from the other side of the infirmary ward as Hange tends to the girl's physical testing, asking her about movements in her limbs and quizzing her on common place ideals, such as color matching, identifying shapes, and labeling objects around the room. As soon as the remark passes through Jean's lips, however, the intent stares fall right on him. Eren doesn't bother to pay the other soldier any mind, instead opting for keeping his attention on the Warrior seated on the padded slab. She glances at him briefly, waves slightly, and he politely returns the gesture, even though looking at her irks a familiar bitterness in his chest.

"You're telling me this bitch forgot who she is?" Jean drones on, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back against the wall. "You really expect me to believe that?"

"There's no telling just how much she can't remember," Armin responds, "but as far as I can tell, she isn't making this up. She can easily turn into a Titan and escape over Wall Rose, into Maria territory, yet she hasn't."

"Maybe she can't recall how," Sasha voices after lightly wrapping her arms around waist.

Connie scoffs in disbelief. "Or maybe she's waiting for the perfect opportunity to flee, like when we're all nice and comfortable around her again."

"Comfortable?" Jean echoes indignantly. "Last time we were _comfortable_ with anyone Annie killed twenty-nine people, and we lost over fifty men reclaiming Eren from our psychopathic pals Reiner and Bertholdt. If we're lucky she won't kill us while we're sleeping tonight. I vote we ship her ass off to the inner wall, let the Military Police execute her, and we'll package her head to Historia in a little box with a fucking _bow_."

"I'm afraid I am inclined to agree," Armin affirms without hesitation.

Eren leans his shoulder into the rigid surface of the granite wall to keep himself grounded. His stomach churns at the thought of attending a public execution, flinches at the imaginary sound of the guillotine slicing through the thick vertebrae of Annie's neck with relative ease. _A deafening crunch_. "Let's give her the benefit of the doubt," he tells them after a beat of stillness. "We don't have to trust her, but she's also our only real lead towards the Titan in the Wall."

"The only lead we need is that key around your neck," Jean barks back, jabbing his finger against Eren's sternum where he hits the crest.

Eren back-hands his wrist. "It's a key to the _basement,_ dumbshit, what could my father possibly have hidden down there that's any relevance to the Titans in the Walls?"

Jean grunts under his breath. "We don't know. _That's_ why we even went on that stupid expedition in the first place. And how did that end? Oh yes, that's right, with _her_ "—he gestures to Annie who glances back at them quizzically—"slaughtering thirty percent of the troops, the incapacitation of our Captain, and Armin bled from his _face_ for a straight half-hour!"

"Keep your voice down," Armin stresses, gently grasping Jean's forearm. "Look, she hasn't been awake in Heaven knows how long"—

"Twenty-nine months and fourteen days." They all give Eren a sideways glance and he quickly presses his lips together, opting out of informing them the only reason he knew this was because he's punched her crystal each day equal to the number of days since she cocooned. ( _"When are you going to stop hurting yourself like this?"_ He almost laughs bitterly at the empathy in Mikasa's voice.)

His arms ache in pseudo-pain as he remembers, between all the events and the countless times the void has consumed him, the way his bones would shatter like a human's but heal like a monster's, just to be broken again and again until he was too tired of existing between the conscious world and the unforgiving darkness. Eren stares down at his hands and flexes them, curling his digits into tight fists so he can observe the way his mended bones press against the cage of his flesh. _I hit her crystal that night with eight-hundred and thirty-four punches._

He gazes at her longingly. _Is that how long it took to get through to you, Annie?_

Armin clears his throat. "Alright, it's been twenty-nine months and fourteen days. Amnesia comes as no honest surprise, but what's truly bewildering is how little she actually remembers. The rate at which she recollects her memories could be slow, might take months or even years… that renders her and all her previously valuable information useless to us."

"So in the end, the Military Police is our only option…" Connie scratches the back of his neck as the uncomfortable conclusion sets in. "Sorry but, I'm siding with Eren on this one. She's our best lead."

" _Connie_ ," Jean says gruffly, "this might be difficult for you, but think about this _logically_. She could remember anything at any time, and if she remembers how to _shift_ , who knows how many people she'll kill."

Something grim, defensive and almost malicious broils behind Connie's glare as he gestures accusingly at the opposing soldier. "I know I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, _Jean_ , but at least I'm not a selfish asshole like you! We _all_ know this isn't about anyone but _Marco_."

 **"Shut up!"** Jean snaps when the comment hits him right where it hurts. "Don't you _dare_ bring Marco into this!"

"Come on, guys!" Armin stresses. "Don't do this now!"

"Why?" Connie shoots between them, but his attention remains fixed on Jean, "because I'm right?! You don't give a rat's ass for anyone's life but your own! You have some personal vendetta against her because she _possibly_ killed Marco, and all the horseshit you're spewing from the gaping hole in your face can't mask the fact you're a self-righteous prick who only cares about himself. You joined the Scouting Legion for you, yourself and your glory. So why don't you take your logic and throw it to the wind with the rest of Marco's ashes!"

"Connie!" Sasha exclaims, but the boy doesn't pay her any mind.

"I'll break your fucking neck!" Jean seethes, stepping towards him rapidly until they're within arm's length.

Connie narrows his eyes into daggers. _"Bring it."_

Levi is studying his team from his seat in the ward's desk chair, which he had pulled up beside the examination table, as Sasha steps between the two and breaks them up with a firm demand, pushing Jean back towards Armin and Connie towards Eren. _Divided_. And Mikasa looks at her Captain as if to say, 'See?'

Several minutes of utter quiet and the group's silent fuming later, Hange approaches them from the other end of the room. "Good news is she's physically fine. Unfortunately, she has some severe amnesia. She can't remember anything before waking up from the crystal, not where she came from nor where she is now, and the events from last night are very blurry to her."

"What now?" Sasha asks. "She wasn't lyin'. But that just leaves us back where we started, and with someone who can't control her Titan form."

"Whatever," Jean says decidedly over an exasperated sigh, storming quickly towards the door. "Do what you will; I don't want any part of it. I have some damn horses to feed."

"Wouldn't want your family to starve!" Connie snaps at him as he leaves.

Glimpsing briskly between the boys until the former is out of sight, Sasha casts her gaze onto Mikasa who returns with an equally troubled expression, and then passes back to Eren as he abandons them in favor of Annie still sitting quietly across the infirmary. The tension thickens in wake of the abrupt silence. "I'll get 'im," she declares finally, breaking into an immediate jog for the door.

"Why are you defending Annie?" Armin questions Connie, a scrutinizing gaze fixated on him almost injudiciously.

"I'm not saying I'm _thrilled_ with her," he amends in return, "but she's still a _person_ , Armin. I could be like Jean and blame her for the shit I'm not even sure she's connected to, but there is no force in all of Wall Rose capable of bringing me to _hate_ her, especially not when we both know she hasn't always been a monster. Right now there is a confused girl whose life is being dictated by us, and she doesn't understand why. It makes me sick to think you and Jean are so willing to send her to the chopping block."

"She's dangerous."

"She's a _human_ _being_."

"Forgetting you massacred a bunch of people doesn't excuse you from doing it."

"What makes you think she had a choice?"

Armin doesn't bother to respond to that, not when he reflects on what Eren mentioned to them before. ' _She accused me of killing her mother, of lying to her and making her do something very, very horrible.'_

Eren exchanges his look between them and Mikasa, but his sister passes her gaze to the floor as if telling him that she has no input on the topic, and Connie stands defensively three steps away from Armin, directly at his side. He doesn't bother to diffuse their tension and instead turns on the ball of his foot to face the other end of the ward. He approaches Annie, perching himself onto the chair Hange had previously occupied.

He isn't surprised when she flinches away from him. "I won't hurt you," he says reassuringly. "I'm sorry about yelling at you last night. I just had to be sure you weren't fucking with me."

Fucking with him – she had to be, because there was no _way_ she could just _forget_ , not when they needed her – when he _needed_ her, needed her **_truth_**. But, shit, he shouldn't have grabbed her like that, shouldn't have been so cruel even as she broke and cried beneath him. _I made the infamous Annie Leonhardt cry._ A pang of guilt stabs into his gut like the jagged blade of a dagger, then acutely twists, and cuts deeper. _What a cruel thing indeed._

"It was still a little much," she concedes, drawing up her sweater hood. Regardless of just how much she could actually remember about her life, she is still Annie – (friend, enemy, traitor, monster, **murderer** ) – and Eren recognizes that she's feeling insecure.

"I'm sorry."

"Okay."

He really did fuck up. "Alright, I'll just skip straight to it then… What can you tell me?"

"About what?"

"What's the first thing you remember? Anything at all, no matter what it is."

She presses her lips into a thin line and crosses her hands on her lap. Several moments of pondering later she finally answers. "My name is Annie L-… Leo…hear… Annie Leonhardt. I remember now. Annie Leonhardt."

"Good."

"I'm…sixteen years old."

"Yes."

"…That's all I know."

Eren furrows his brow. "You mean… literally? All you can recall is your name and age? How about where you are, where you're from, your training? How about your birthday? Favorite color?"

She glances at the floor. "Too many questions…"

"Sorry."

Levi crosses one leg over the other. "You sure have a way with women."

Eren lets that comment slide, especially since he isn't wrong (he ill-humoredly imagines Annie affirming that statement with one of her own retellings of the past, but that's just stupid of him). "Regardless," he drones, raking his slender fingers through the tangles in his adumbral bangs, "at least tell me how much you remember about the Titans."

"A…what?"

"For the love of fucking _Sina_ …"

"I told you she's a blank slate," Hange informs him with her typical matter-of-fact suave as she rounds around him and presses her palms to the boy's shoulders. "Alright, I need to finish my exam! All men must clear the room!"

"I don't think it's a good idea to leave you alone with her."

"What am I doing to do," she muses as she impels him towards the exit, "experiment on her? Take all of her minor organs and sell them on the black market?"

"Knowing you? _Yes_ – WHOA!"

Eren stumbles out the room into the force of her shove. A moment later Connie follows suit, but he's worse with his balance and he ends up slamming shoulder-first into the opposing wall. Levi and Mikasa show themselves out before either of them became her next victim, and finally, Hange pushes Armin out into the group, gives them a predatory grin, and hurls the door shut.

They stand in a collective reticence for several moments in the awkward aftermath. "Fuck it," Eren mumbles, sauntering off down the hall, "I'm taking a walk to… clear my head, or something. Whatever."

"On the bright side," Armin chirps, giving the remaining members of his team a sideways glance, "at least Annie can grow back whatever Hange takes."

He doesn't expect anyone to laugh, but it still unnerves him when they don't.

"Just, uh," he chuckles nervously, "just kidding…"

.

.

.

"Jean! Jean, wait up! Let's just talk about this!"

Sasha follows Jean like a shadow despite his rapid pace as he powerwalks across the castle's courtyard, traversing the limestone platform towards the stables with a storm in his wake. "What's there to talk about?" he snaps over his shoulder before he slams open the shed door. In the stables several horses rear their heads at the abrupt shift in atmosphere and the several new recruits have to catch them by their reigns to keep them calm.

"Jean-!"

"Quit following me! I don't want to hear it!"

Sasha watches him gather several bales of hay by their binds and tow them from the tower to the floor boards. "I know you're upset about Annie," she continues undeterred, "we all are. But you can't allow your feelin's to be justified by the hunch that she had anythin' at all to do with Marco."

"What makes you think this is about Marco?"

"'Cause you flipped out over 'im."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't in the wrong! Connie never should have brought it up!"

"And you shouldn't've insulted his intelligence. Sure, what Connie said was messed up, I'll agree with that. Marco was your best friend, but…" She glances down at the scattered straw crunched beneath her boots, brittle stalks crippled agonizingly in the presence of her weight. Snapped in half beneath a force they cannot fight again. She thinks there's a metaphor for her team in there somewhere. "…I get the impression that maybe he was somethin' else to you."

"What does it matter, Sasha? Mikasa was something to me, Marco was something to me, the Scouting Legion was something to me – what Connie said _was_ messed up but it was _right_. There's not much I have left to care about in this world and all I have to look forward to every morning is an over-glorified death on the battlefield of a war we aren't winning. _We will never win_. I know this but… I still joined the Legion both for Marco's memory and so I wouldn't be _forgotten_. To help Humanity? More like help _myself_."

"That's… that's not true…"

"Eren's right about me, you know; I'm a disgrace, not a soldier."

"Jean!" Sasha exclaims, grasping his forearms. "Don't you _ever_ think about yourself that way! What you're doin' is the greatest sacrifice anyone could ask for, and you're better than the rest of our class who all defected to the Garrison in pure fear of the real enemy! _And_ you did it for Marco, for Eren, for a better future for yourself; that's not selfish! That doesn't make you a disgrace! It's a choice and it makes you _human_."

"But what if I made the wrong choice, Sasha?!" he snaps, and an almost immediate silence consumes them in a veil of painful truth. His amber gaze diverts to the floor in shame. "I think about it more often these days – how I'm afraid that I enlisted in the wrong branch, how I'm just as afraid of Titans as the next soldier, how I might be too afraid to act when my team needs me the most, how I don't trust myself enough anymore to know if I'll run the other way like a coward…"

"Fear is a human quality, that doesn't make you a coward…"

Jean ponders that for a brief moment. " _Hmph_. Then I guess that means Eren has always been a monster, huh?"

"That's not funny."

"It's not a joke."

Sasha's eyes flicker briefly to something over his shoulder. The shadowed visage of the mysterious figure obscures her ability to pick up on any major details of who it might have been, but she hopes it is just a wandering soldier and not an eavesdropping Eren. "Don't blame 'im for your own misfortunes, this isn't his fault."

"Then whose is it, Sasha?!" Jean barks, breaking from her hold and slamming the underside of his foot against the nearest post. "Who's the one keeping us from going on our stupid expeditions into Maria when we're humanity's last hope?! Who's the one we swore to protect when he treats our sacrifices like we were born to be ants crushed beneath boots?! Who's the one who got Erwin Smith **killed**?!"

"None of that matters!"

"It does when he acts more like one of those _things_ than a real human being!"

"Jean-"

"I swore my life to a selfish asshole who's going to throw it away like everything else we've worked for!"

_"Jean."_

"I'm not going to end up like Erwin and die for the wrong goddamn cause!"

Something feral surges through Sasha's body like liquid fire. "ENOUGH!" She exclaims, and just like that Jean's jaw slams closed. She draws back with a barely audible grunt of what might be disgust. "Don't tarnish Erwin's name like that. It's not right."

The following moment of quiet settles uncomfortably between them.

Sasha presses her hands to her waist. "Look, I know you. Remember the leadership you demonstrated in Trost? It may not have been _flawless_ but it was the best we had and you _did it_. You _lead_ us. You _saved_ us. You could have abandoned us but you _didn't_. Trust me on this… you'll pull through when we need you most. You're far from selfish. And when it all comes down to it, you made the right choice."

Jean scatters his anger with a furtive sigh. "Okay, I'm sorry…"

"You damn well better be. And don't doubt that Eren is capable of all the same things, 'cause he _always_ comes through for us and he asks for nothin' in return."

A meager smile ebbs across Jean's lips. "I get it, I get it, you don't need to nag me to death. I'll try to put a little more faith in him, in this team as a whole, and in myself from now on. It's what Marco would want." He gratefully clasps the arch of her shoulder. "Thanks, Sash…"

"I do my best. Here, hand me that bale, I'll help you feed the horses."

Unbeknownst to them, the shadow figure from before is pressed back against the right barn door that they had left ajar, arms lightly crossed and one fist playing with the gilt basement key.

The duo of soldiers emerges from the inner sanctum, and Sasha notices the figure several paces later, swinging around to face him with a start. "Uh, E-Eren! Hi!"

Jean pauses after her, but when he meets Eren's impassive stare, his clutch on the ropes tightens. Eren has never looked at them so stolidly before now – it's unnerving, to say the least, to watch as their friend's trust in them wane away like smoldering embers, a once jubilant passion like the burning mouth of a cigarette being crushed out against a cobblestone railing.

He pushes off the wooden division. "A monster."

Jean winces. Says nothing.

"Not human," Eren continues apathetically, voice too steady, too level, too _calm_. "Erwin's death is my fault. I'm incompetent. I don't value anyone's life but my own."

Sasha glimpses at the silent soldier beside her before passing Eren an empathetic glance (or maybe, if he were to rip her chest open and inspect the very fabric of her muscles and the networks of her veins, he'll notice that she's always, _always_ pitied him. Pitied him long before they were recruited to the legion. Pitied him long before Trost ever happened). "Oh, Eren… he didn't mean it."

"Of course he meant it. Everyone _else_ does, so what makes him any different?"

The shifter turns acutely on the ball of his foot and takes off in the other direction, back for the castle. Sasha bites on the plush of her calloused lower lip until she punctures her flesh. A taste of copper explodes across her tongue. She wonders about how Eren bites himself to turn – shedding blood to transform into a monster, offering up his humanity to become what humanity hates most so he can save _humanity_.

And then she realizes, perhaps too late, he hasn't transformed in two years and denied Hange her tests on his Titan form. So why, **_why_** , are they still calling him _monster?_ Because he hasn't been protecting them? Because the monster is always right beneath the surface of his skin, and all he needs to do to awaken it… is break through his human flesh?

Or is it…because there's something they missed? She missed? Something that has been right in front of her very eyes. Something that is probably not even in his _control_ , like his mentality or his emotions.

 _Something_ –

"Oh my God," she whispers, dropping the bale of hay to the dirt as revolt hits her with the force of a landslide. "I gotta go! Sorry Jean!"

"Sasha!" he exclaims, but the hunter is already disappearing down the path in Eren's wake, leaving Jean with a sudden gorge of unease in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this story is receiving such positive feedback, you guys are the greatest! If you liked this chapter for any reason or every reason, please take the time to leave me a comment!  
> Recommend it to everyone you know and watch them break into a thousand pieces! It's also great for reading aloud to the whole family!
> 
> 1: Sasha's dialect with the accent is heavily inspired by my own because there wasn't too much to work with in the manga, so I coupled the slang with the common traits of hunters and farmers. It's supposed to show she's not afraid of being herself, nor is she embarrassed by her origins, so she no longer talks as politely as before. Hope it doesn't annoy you guys, sorry.
> 
> Alright, Eure out~


	3. Cavort

"This is not a love story… There are no happy endings."

\- Jason Meyers  
 _Exit Here_

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* * *

**MALEVOLENCE**

**Chapter 3:** **Cavort**

("I'm flying into a stormy horizon…" – Mikasa Ackerman, when casually asked about future plans during the yearly physical examination)

* * *

_"I want to teach you something new."_

_"Something new? But I was finally getting the hang of this throw."_

Hange is with two of her squad members in Annie's new jail cell. The blonde doesn't comprehend that the cell is for prisoners because she can't remember what these bars are designed for, but the commander mentions that "they're for keeping dangerous people separate from the rest of the population" and Annie presses her lips closed, opting out of any other questions (some of which might involve asking just how dangerous she might be, _is_ ). Eren peers through the segmented spaces of the grimy bars, studying her from the cascade of darkness that has expanded into the corridor with the descending night.

Stepping out of sight of the cell, he reclines his back against the rigid wall and buries his face in his hands. He inhales deeply, absorbing the scent of the day – he smells like the faint, ashy, cedar wood musk that clings to clothes after being exposed to body pyres for a prolonged lapse of time (he remembers stumbling upon Jean once, scrubbing at his skin in the men's bathhouse, his flesh raw and oozing blood from scraping off "that goddamn smell of death" with his bare nails).

If he avoids the prod of those ghoulish nightmares from Trost, he relates the odor to the first time in his life when he came to know Annie as something a little more than just a friend, during a time when things were so much clearer for him, when she wasn't that monster capable of mercilessly killing the people she had called friend. So he lets those memories dominate his conscious instead.

_"You're an impervious man, Eren. Most girls would be turned off by that."_

_"Annie…"_

_The sunlight glares around her silhouette like a halo of fire and lightning. Its vacillating warmth brings out the idiosyncratic chill in her eyes._

_"Just raise your hands. Trust me."_

_He lifts his fists to either side of his face, and is thoroughly surprised when she grasps his wrists and coaxes one hand to her hip, the other to the side of her neck. "Uh – I don't think this is a… uhm, shit… A-Annie, what are you doing?"_

_She traces her lips along the ridges of his. "You smell a bit like burnt cedar."_

_"Is that bad?"_

_"Cedar wood is what they use for body pyres, you know… but no"—she leans in to meet him, and he accepts her kiss with a small sigh of satisfaction. "No, it's not bad," she mumbles against him._

"What a fucking lie," he mutters to himself, slamming his fist back against the wall in a burst of resentment and self-execration. His bones absorb the impact easily in the wake of torture he's put himself through already. "Was it all a lie, Annie? Did I ever mean anything to you…?"

Several moments later, boots scuff the maw of the stairwell as a soldier descends into the dungeon. In the splotch of torchlight their shadowy visage materializes, defined by the familiar curtain of dark silken hair and that characteristically haggard scarf. "I knew I'd find you down here," the familiar voice states matter-of-factly. "You didn't show up to dinner tonight."

Eren glances at Mikasa out of the corner of his eye. "When do I ever?"

"That is fair, I digress."

He scoffs gently before pushing off the wall and stepping up to meet her. "When was that, anyway?"

"Only an hour or two ago. Is that how long you have been here?"

"Maybe. I don't know, I have a tendency to lose track of time." He gestures over his shoulder with his thumb and she follows his vector to the jail cell. "They're setting Annie up down here for the time being. I just wanted to make sure the Commander wasn't skinning her alive in the name of science."

"After everything she's done to you, I don't think Annie deserves your concern."

"That doesn't matter now."

"Yes it does, Eren."

" _No_ it _doesn't_ ," he snaps back. "Besides, I need answers. I need something only she can offer me."

Mikasa lightly crosses her arms over her chest. "Will it finally bring you the peace you've been looking for?"

"Yes. Maybe. I don't know."

Eren's not as sure of himself as he used to be, which bothers Mikasa, like a needle that threads a sense of unease under her porcelain skin – in fact, it makes her _angry_. It boils resentment within her chest. How could Annie do this to them, the people she embraced as her friends? How could she do this to _Eren_? How could she let him _in_ when she knew that they were both going to regret it in the end? How could she have lived with the betrayal and the anguish and with all that _blood_ on her _hands_?

Mikasa realizes she is **furious**. Annie is responsible for the death of the only family Mikasa had had left in this world. And she almost took her Eren, her brother, the boy who gave her another chance at life. He's something irreplaceable. And here Annie is, torturing and tormenting and fracturing Eren's sanity with days of malaise like it's her God-given right. He doesn't deserve _this_ and she doesn't deserve _him_.

Like Reiner and Bertholdt, Annie is a murderer disguised as a human. A wolf in sheep's clothing. A lie beneath a lie disguised as a lie.

Eren's brisk exhale brings Mikasa back to reality. He presses his palm to his face, rubbing the weariness from his corresponding eye. "I really fucked up with her, Mikasa. I've fucked up everything. It's all so wrong and broken and… and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix all that she's done or all that I've caused…"

She grasps either side of his head and coaxes his gaze in her direction. "Everything is broken Eren," she says tenderly, "but my hope in you isn't. You have to find a way. You don't have to make peace with Annie but you should try to fix what is damaged between you, help her remember who she is and what she meant to you, help yourself by helping her… even though we all know she doesn't deserve it."

"I need her to tell me the truth."

"What truth?"

"The truth she doesn't remember. That's how I'm – how _we're,_ going to fix this."

"What _truth_ , Eren? What do you want her to tell you?"

They hear several sets of footsteps. Eren rapidly backs away from Mikasa as if she's burned him with hands of scathing fire, just as Hange, Moblit, and Levi appear in the patch of torchlight at the maw of the cell door. "Ah, you two," Hange muses, the fire glint in her glasses masking the sadistic curiosity in her eyes. "Knew I recognized your voices. Is there something we can help you with?"

"Just came to see Annie," Eren answers automatically.

"Sorry to inform you," Moblit interjects, "but she won't be having any visitors aside from the Commander for the first week."

Eren glances at Hange. "Even me? Hange, even _me_? But there's so much I need to know, there are important questions I need to ask and-!"

"I'm sorry," she interjects, firmly patting him on the shoulder. "But I need to spend the rest of the week studying her first. I promise you though, any time after that, if you want to see her I'll allow for visitors."

Eren casts his gaze down and acknowledges her with a brisk nod.

Levi has been staring intently at Mikasa, who, in return, doesn't concern herself with speaking up in objection like he had initially anticipated. He shoos them along with a passive wave of his hand. "Off to bed with you shitty brats, it's already passed curfew."

"Come on Eren," Mikasa remarks as she turns for the exit. "You can walk me back to my room."

He exchanges one last glimpse with the cell before trailing his sister out of the dungeon, up out of the darkness and into the night, leaving his truth locked up in a cage beneath his very feet.

.

.

.

Mikasa shares a room with Sasha who's a decently heavy sleeper, so she doesn't stir to the obnoxious clack of the bedroom door's latch as Mikasa pushes it open. Eren leans against the outer frame, arms crossed lightly over his chest. The Eurasian checks to make sure she hasn't disturbed her roommate before facing her brother, the torchlight across the hall casting an indigo ember glow of concern into her eyes. "Will you be okay?"

"Yeah," he replies nonchalantly, "I think… I'm not sure of much these days."

She gently presses her lips to the side of his cheek. "Go to sleep then, Eren, you look exhausted."

"Goodnight, Mika."

As the bedroom door shuts on him, he pushes lazily from the wall and saunters down the silent hall towards the adjacent corridor. His distressing thoughts of Annie are whipping around thought for thought, ranging from the first time she kissed him to the fight in Stohess to the nights in the mess hall when they would brush hands or to those lazy afternoons when they would pin each other down in training sessions for several moments too long. None of it makes any sense to him – how could he have been so blinded by _her_ , by his _desires_ and his _selfishness_ that he didn't see her for what she truly was?

When he turns the corner he instantly rams into another body, the rebounding force expelling the open book from the blond's hands.

"Eren?"

"Armin…" Eren mutters, quickly scooping up the abused novel from its felled place on the floor. He swipes off the cover before offering it back. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."

"It's alright. You look like you've seen a ghost," Armin adds as he accepts it graciously, "is everything okay?"

Eren does that thing of his where he rakes his fingers through his mop of hair, signaling that he's either exhausted or blatantly anxious, so Armin knows already that something is up. "I'm just tired, so I'm going to bed early."

"…It's twelve in the morning."

The shifter's gaze darts out the window to where the voided nighttime darkness has consumed the castle grounds. "Shit, is it? Wait, then what are you doing up so late?"

"I had a silly nightmare about… you know."

Eren's eyes flicker down to the book's title, _The Beast Cannot Be Recognized_ , and for a brief moment the petite visage of a distant memory fabricates the back of his broken mind. Dark hair matted with clumps of flesh and blood, and mangled, mutilated, angelic features. "…I'm sorry about that, Ar." He reaches over and pats Armin reassuringly on the wing of his shoulder. "Hey… stay with me for a smoke, I'd like the company tonight."

Armin's expression twists. "You still smoke? It leaves such a horrendous smell on you." He chuckles light-heartedly, gesturing to the door several pace behind him. "Why don't you come in, then?"

"If I didn't know you any better I'd say you're flirting with me."

The blond boy scoffs at that as they approach his room. "You're implying that you're good enough for me, Eren." He swings the door open graciously. "What would Mikasa think?"

Eren laughs gently and squeezes inside. He hasn't been in here in some months, but nothing appears to have been moved at all; the bookcase is lined with novels and his desk has charts haphazardly strewn about the pine wood surface. Unlike Eren's desolate room, it is lively, active, and homey. He picks up the desk chair and carries it over to the open window, propping it down at the base of the stone sill.

Armin perches on his bed, flipping open to the page he had left off on. Eren tilts his head back and inhales.

Exhales.

"Haven't you read that thing like a hundred times already?"

"Yes," the blond digresses, "but it's all I have to remember her by. You of all people should know what it's like to be left with nothing but a grim reminder at what had been, and what will never be."

Another drag.

_He hits his knees at the foot of her crystal, one arm fallen limply at his side, the other hand pressing up against the surface of her prison._

_"You said," he starts, his voice breaking beneath the weight of his own defeated existence, "you said you loved me… was it a lie, Annie? Was everything a lie?" He curls his hind hand into a fist, drawing it back, and then, driving it forward into the face of the crystal._

**_"YOU LIED TO ME!"_ **

Inhale.

_For the first time since his Hannes died, since he first began to lose his hope in himself, he cries. "Answer me," he mutters, wondering if she could hear him, and if words meant anything to her. "Annie please, please… Tell me you loved me. I need to know that you really love me…"_

_The shattered bones in his hand are burning as they heal. He clenches his fist to his chest, to his heart._

_"Was it the truth?"_

Exhale.

"Yeah," he agrees finally, "yeah, I know."

He flicks his half-cigarette out the window and eases back against the chair. Armin watches Eren lull off to sleep from the corner of his eye before he quietly drapes his cloak over the shifter's chest… and just as stealthily, he opens the room door. Taking one swift glimpse back at his unconscious best friend, Armin shuts the division quietly behind him, and faces the shifting shadow that has been poised at the end of the hall long before he bumped into Eren.

"Saw you standing there," he remarks casually as Sasha steps into the dramatic light. "Is everything okay, Sash?"

"We need to talk about Eren."

Armin presses his lips into a thin line. "Why?"

"He's been lyin' to us. And I think you know somethin' about it."

.

.

.

The winter is drawing in quickly this year, but despite the sweeping front of bitter frost, the forest is thrumming to life with the sound of bird songs. As Eren jets through the canopy, his goggles defending his eyes from the merciless onslaught of wind and humidity, he wonders where most birds leave to, if they see the ocean or frozen earth or the fields of fire or seas of heat and dirt.

_It must be nice to have a real set of wings._

The rancid odor of wet leaves and maple-infused dew after last night's thunderstorm leaves a musky aftertaste in his mouth. He hasn't been outside in months after Levi ceased the rigorous training exercises to keep his team on their feet, which may or may not have been a decision influenced by Eren's lack of desire to assist the expeditions outside of Wall Rose. Despite the thick layer of rain still slicked across the surface of the trees, he has no trouble sticking his landing on the perch of a thick branch.

Connie hits the branch beside him with all the grace of a careening boulder.

"Are you sure they're around here?" Eren asks him incredulously, peering through the thicket of the frond.

"Of course," Connie replies factually, "I replaced the pads myself."

Levi's horse hammers through the underbrush directly below them, the obsidian hooves thundering against the loamy soil as he darts through the maze of trees with precision and skill only tampered to such perfection by his years of expeditions outside the Walls. "If you don't down the Titans before they see you," he calls out to them, "you'll be the ones who get killed first! Get your asses into gear!"

"I hate exercises," Connie mumbles.

Suddenly, Mikasa and Sasha rocket by them, the latter soldier squealing with delight. Mikasa swings up on an arc and launches up over the canopy into the sky, set aflame with the blazing autumnal sun. Her body suspends itself like its drifting through still waters, limitless and free, silhouetted against the contrasting azure; then she somersaults and sky turns to forest turns to the darkness below and she shoots down again, impacting a branch to stick her landing.

Sasha twirls her body and folds her arms up, drilling through the narrow opening of two entwined branches. Her grapples smash into a branch and she rockets down to the river, letting her upper torso hang loose so her back just barely skims the sapphire surface and her fingers glide through the still water. She exhales slowly and time goes with it, grinding almost to an immediate halt, her eyes igniting with the light of the sun as she passes under the canopy's maw, Mikasa silhouetted against the sun high above her and the cutting waves curling up around her arms.

With another burst of gas behind her she explodes through the air, swinging around another branch for leverage and landing effortlessly against the face of a wide oak. "You're slowing down Mikasa!" she taunts, angling herself for another kick off.

Mikasa accepts the challenge with a wordless nod and they take off in synch, disappearing into the jaws of the wilderness.

"They're enjoying it," Eren states listlessly, nudging Connie in the arm with his elbow. "Let's catch up."

They dart through the forest in the wake of the girls, crossing over Armin who briefly swings into view beneath them before merging with the natural camouflage of the thicket. Eren careens around the rushing trees before he finds a solid perch near a clearing, and he lands effortlessly with his friend only a split second behind him.

"Look there!" Connie remarks, jabbing his finger towards Levi charging out of the brushes. They peer as far ahead as they can, observing the rapid movements of Jean and Armin in the underbrush, the blitzed shadow of Mikasa as she gracefully prowls the safe zone from a distance, and Sasha drawing to a swing from the limbs. Then they see the haphazard display of Titan dummies in the center clearing. "See, I told you they were around here somewhere!"

As if called to action by the strike of a brass bell, the group immediately dispatches, streamlining for the pseudo-Titans dotting the flats.

"CALLED IT!" Connie exclaims first, swinging down towards the largest one. His blades gleam as he turns them in his grasp so they're pointing down instead of up, and he flies in for the kill, boots kissing the blunt edges of his swords for support. He cleaves through, flipping backwards into the strike, and lands against a birch, swinging from his cords wedged into the branch overhead. "Ha! Not too shabby!"

Eren is on course for a direct slash through the same Titan when Jean suddenly spirals down from above, his cutlasses reflecting the sunlight as he slams into the dummy a blur of silver and white, slicing cleanly through the foam padding of the neck. His cut is deeper than Connie's and significantly wider, mirroring the shit-eating grin he's wearing as he lands next to the Springer boy, just out of arms reach.

"That was my kill!" Eren snaps as he's forced to make a landing on a lower perch to avoid dicing Jean in half.

"Learn to move your ass then, Jaeger!"

"Enough," Mikasa remarks as she acrobatically swings around them from somewhere to Jean's left. She carves out a chunk of the false material from the dummy's neck, a segment that is easily twice the size of Jean's and Connie's combine. Her gear impacts a branch and she hits the trunk of a tree approximately nine yards away from them, legs absorbing the initial impact.

Eren lunges for a different dummy and twirls into his inertia, once, twice, twisting his body to build momentum behind his swings. His swords kiss the neck.

Something flashes before his eyes. An image of Hange, poised at the forefront of the stage as she briefs the mass of Scouts during her official indoctrination as Commander.

_"These Titans are all human. Like you, like me."_

Suddenly, **he doesn't want to do this**. The blade snaps out of his grasp and he tumbles for a split second before snatching his line bare-handed, tugging it into his velocity so the sword is forced free. It spirals down after him, snagging his sleeve the first attempt he makes for the handle. He catches it skillfully on his immediate follow-through, now focusing instead on maneuvering for the forest floor. He hits and rolls, somersaulting up to his feet, before he slams himself shoulder first against the nearest hardwood.

One palm is burned from his cord. It sizzles as it heals, and sears immensely, more so than the actual wound.

"Pathetic!" Jean calls down jeeringly.

Mikasa zips down to meet her brother and soundlessly plants herself beside him. "Are you alright?"

" _Fine_ ," he barks, hissing at the igneous pain in his hand.

"You don't look fine," she passes back, shoving her goggles up to her forehead. "You never do. Not these days, at least. So stop lying to me." A brief silence jolts like static between them. Mikasa briskly changes the subject to help pretend that the sudden awkwardness never existed. "You seem distracted. Armin has informed me that your scores have been dropping."

"Scores? This isn't a fucking game!" He pauses the same moment the words slip from his mouth. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to snap… I'm just in a shit load of pain."

"So you're not fine," she says as more of a fact than a question.

"No, I'm not fucking _fine_ , Mikasa. I haven't been _fine_. When have I _ever_ been _fine_? Every waking moment of the day I'm tormented by that bitch I used to call my _friend_ and none of my other comrades trust me anymore. I feel _alone_ and _vulnerable_ and every time I pretend – _pretend_ , for the love of Sina this isn't even the _real_ goddamn _thing_ – that I'm killing a Titan, I remember that every Titan is a person and I hesitate. Can you believe it? I'm siding with the monsters that ate my _mother!"_

"Eren…"

"I've lost control," he mutters, leaning his head against the rigid bark of the timber palisade. "I've lost control of everything… I've lost control of _myself_. How can you still have hope in me after everything that's happened?"

Mikasa tenderly rubs small circles between his shoulder blades. "It's okay. No matter what Armin and I are on your side, remember? Levi believes in you, too. You're not alone."

"But you don't understand," he stresses through his teeth, abruptly whirling around to face her. "Mikasa, you don't _understand_. There's more to it than that!"

"Like what?"

"Like – _like_." He fumbles for his words. "This is so hard to say because there's no easy way to say it! I've… I've been _lying_ , Mikasa, lying to you and to Levi and to Hange and to Armin. _Everyone_. I have been lying to _everyone_."

"Lying?" she utters under her breath. "About what?"

_"Everything!"_

"You're not making any sense, Eren. Please tell me what's wrong, you're worrying me."

" _Everything_ is wrong. Everything is so, so **_wrong_**."

"…Then I think it's time you confront Annie."

The awkward tension returns to them in the form of a stillness that smothers them like rags, suddenly making it hard for him to breathe, obscuring his thoughts, rattling his apathy back to life. "What makes you think this is about Annie?" he asks her finally.

"I never said it was, but in those regards, maybe it always has been. You're trying to convince me that you're stressed about something completely different and unrelated to her when I figure that they're one in the same."

He grunts. "Well, they're not." _They can't be… can they?_

 _"_ Just… Go make things right. Put yourself at peace with all that's happened until now so you can move on already."

 _"Make things right,"_ he echoes bitterly, "when has anything ever been _right_ in the history of this whole fucking world?"

"Please, Eren, listen to me. You have to learn that truth before it eats up what's left of you."

"And what about my truth? What about the lies I've been telling you?"

"You can always tell me that truth later," she answers, "but for now, take care of what matters most. I hate seeing you this way."

His hand has stopped burning. It is sore when he flexes his fingers but the scar is all but gone, leaving nothing in its wake aside from the warmth of renewal and the relief of being whole once more. He cherishes the brief, rarefied moment of reprieve-like comfort, before his more natural, more austere thoughts consume him once more: how inhuman it is to find contentment in his abhorrent ability.

"Yeah," comes the belated reply, "I hate me too."

.

.

.

Annie has been staring at the ceiling for countless hours, attempting to recollect her life through faint fragments and familiarities the quiet in the room brings forth – this strange image of a girl in her head, with hair as dark as the shadows, parted down the middle into petite pigtails. She jabs the wall with her fist when she feels an unusual surge of anger rising like bile in her throat, but she does not know what she hates nor why she pictures two men every time it happens: one with an anxious expression, tall and slender and awkward, the other with an affirmative, brotherly way of speaking, platinum hair and the strength to break a person's neck with ease.

She doesn't know them.

She used to.

That's when Eren Jaeger slams the door open to her cell. The combination of the immediate surprise and the sudden, omnipotent danger in the air compels her to her feet, and she reels back towards the far wall across from the bars.

She hasn't seen him in two weeks since they first put her here, and still he is as intimidating as the first day they met (re-met, she reminds herself). She does not fear him, no, but she feels like she _owes_ him something. And because she cannot give it to him he will _take_ _it_ from her.

He glares at her as he tosses the key ring to the right, throwing it away from him so carelessly Annie questions why anyone would trust him with something like that. The keys scratch the cobblestone with metallic hisses as they slide several feet away and skid to a rest against the junction of the room, where the wall meets the floor. The resounding sonance of clanking bronze reverberates through the tightly knitted atmosphere.

Looking at him is like standing in the midst of a forest as it blazes to the ground.

She's suffocating on the ashes –

_Burnt cedar wood…_

\- and the sky has gone black with smoke and despair.

"What do you want?" she questions tonelessly, rattled by the resentment blazing in his gaze so her best attempt to disregard her own fear is reduced to rubble. It gives her that vaguely familiar feeling again – like she's seen this before.

In a monster. _What monster?_

"Put your hands up," he orders, raising his fists before himself in his usual stance. It's been so long, he almost forgot his footing.

"Why?" she asks incredulously but does as he commands, bringing her arms up to shield her face. She sweeps one leg around to rest behind the other. Though she doesn't give it much thought, Eren notices almost immediately she's instinctually taken on her own typical style. "What the hell this?"

"We're going to spar."

_"Spar?"_

"Don't you dare hold back!"

He drives forward before she receives a chance to process exactly what's happening, and almost instantly, something within the darkness of Annie's mind sparks to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'm still in shock you like this so much~ You're all so wonderful! If you liked this chapter for any reason or every reason, please take the time to leave me a comment!
> 
> So now Eren is going to force Annie into remembering something, and who's this girl Armin is dreaming of? Stay tuned to find out!   
> And word of warning, don't read anything by Jason Myers unless you're mentally and emotionally prepared. Otherwise, I recommend his novels, especially Exit Here and The Mission.
> 
> Alright, Eure out~


	4. Middle Grounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...uh....I have no excuse.

* * *

 

We are curious machines

That soon lost our will to breathe

For we lost the thing that makes us all believe

-Koda, _Machines_

* * *

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

**MALEVOLENCE**

**Chapter 4: Middle Grounds**

 (“I say goodbye to my halcyon skies.” – Connie Springer, when asked about his family during the yearly mental examination)

* * *

 

There comes a downfall with living in the slums, in places with poor conditions and rodents and diseases that can’t be cured because not a single living (suffering) soul can afford to check into a medical clinic or have a doctor visit them. Soon, the infected and the sick and the starving all succumb to many forms of cruel death – plagues and flesh-devouring viruses and germs from contaminated water that consume the body from the inside out.

But sometimes… sometimes the sickness does not manifest for many years, when it’s too late.

Levi can’t breathe. The pain divvies itself in gags, like liquid fire that poisons his lungs and then scatters, alleviated for that flicker of a moment before consuming him in raw, molten agony once more. These fits attack him so randomly. Once. Once in a while. Once a month. Now he’s getting them once a week, or sometimes they happen spontaneously, usually when he exerts himself and his body becomes weak, like he’s engulfed in a haze that chokes him out.

Then it strikes.

And then, he cannot breathe.

His gagging earns the attention of Jean as he passes by the office on his venture down the corridor. “Captain,” he remarks, clearly disquieted by the harsh fits erupting from inside, and he pushes the cracked door wide open. “Captain, are you okay?”

Levi’s hunched over the side of his desk, using it for support with one arm as he gags into his other hand. He attempts to answer but his lungs cave in again; it feels like they’re trying to expel shards of glass. The darkness is already constricting his vision.

For a minute he wonders if he’s going to lose consciousness altogether.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Jean suggests promptly, coaxing the older man towards the chair, but Levi slaps his hands away with a bewildering amount of strength for someone who’s about to collapse.

And just like that, just as suddenly as it had happened, his pain subsides and he sucks in a greedy gulp of air. The relief is enthralling, offering a temporary guise of sheer thankfulness and mortal cognizance. “I’m fine,” he bluffs as he steadies his breathing. Jean grasps Levi’s shoulder only to have him shrug it off. “Kirschtein, stop it. I said I’m _fine_. It was just some spit down my throat.”

_You’re lying._

“Don’t bother worrying about me.”

_But you’re lying to me, Levi._

Jean hesitates a moment before excusing himself for intruding and taking his leave, making sure to shut the door securely behind him.

Now there is silence. The coughing has alleviated for the time being, but he dreads the moment when it might – will – come again. The Scouting Legion’s general thankfully situates himself in his chair at the front of his sealed window, directly where the early morning sunlight showers into the office through the spotless panes and basks him in the dwindling autumnal heat.

When he’s certain that his subordinate is long gone, Levi gazes down at the splotches of blood coating his palm, and can only mutter about how filthy his hands have become.

_What the fuck do I tell Mikasa?_

* * *

.

.

.

Eren hits the floor back-first as Annie sweeps his legs out from under him and nearly snaps his neck with all the force she puts into throwing him down by his chin. He anticipates the familiar movements and manages to roll over before the initial shock of the impact completely sets in. He shoves up to his feet to find her glaring at him. Despite the anger seeping from her eyes, her lips are cracking up into a thrilling smile, and that’s when he knows that she’s recollecting tidbits of her past through instinct, not force.

“See?” he muses. “You remember a lot more than you think.”

Her expression drops as soon as the statement passes through his lips, as if he’s run a well dry when he expected it to produce more water. “You mean… we’ve done this before?”

“You don’t remember.”

“More than _this_ , then,” she inquires, witnessing the nostalgia of a past she does not know resurface into his mind, forcing his body to tense and his eyes to hollow and his lips to ascend into a sad, sad smile. “You mean, more than fighting?”

“Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to. I can see the pain in you, Eren.” She studies the glower that constricts his handsome features then, the anger and animosity grating on his nerves with every bitter memory she digs up from the graves in their wake. “What did I do to hurt you so badly?”

“What did you do?” he echoes bitterly, the hate leaking through his clenching teeth. “What did you do? What didn’t you do?! You _lying_ ”—he steps up rapidly to meet her, but this time she does not dare move away—“ **murderous** ”—he grasps her sweater with both fists—“back _-stabbing_ ”—he rams her back against the wall and she gasps, reflexively clasping his upper arms to prevent him from pushing into her ** _—“bitch!”_**

And then he kisses her.

It is gentle, tender; characteristics so unlike him she almost wonders if he’s even the same person as he had been the night she awoke into a life she doesn’t remember. The kiss ignites embers in her gut, familiarity in the form of venomous giddiness. He ebbs into a more brisk, more desperate pace, parting her lips with his own calloused ones. She accepts him and digs her nails into the arches of his shoulders.

_Have I – have **we** – done this before?_

Pulling away just as abruptly as he had met her, he utters under his breath, “Do you remember now, Annie?”

Lips swollen, heart slamming against her chest, she can only blink up at him and muster a small pant. “Remember _what,_ Eren?”

Just like that, his glare darkens once again. He shoves away from her, turns sharply and stomps over to the discarded key ring, snatching it up as he swiftly takes his leave.

“What do you want me to remember?!” she exclaims, beyond desperation now, teetering on the plane of breaking. She’s losing her placid façade for one of the rarest moments of her life. “If it’s not the fighting then what the fuck do you want?! _Answer_ me, dammit!”

He doesn’t acknowledge her right away, but he does pause briefly at the threshold of the exit. Annie can feel the anger surging to life within her. He’s tormenting her now, playing with her mind, utilizing her memories like the cords of a wooden puppet – he’s making her dance in the eulogies of forgotten memories and fragments of her past buried beneath the ashes of everything she’s ever hated most.

**_“Tell me what you want!”_ **

Instead he slams the door closed, locks it with an imperative thunk of the inner bolt, and storms out of sight. The entire time his glare is kept focused on the wall or the floor or on anything that isn’t _her_.

As if her puppet strings are severed by his leave, Annie collapses to her knees and screams her agony into her hands.

**_"What do you want from me?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?!"_ **

* * *

.

.

.

Perched on the flattened sill of her bedroom window the next evening, Mikasa watches Eren with hawk-like precision as he tends to the cannabis plants he grows in the courtyard garden. The leaves are meant to be crushed and tucked into rolling paper or expensive pipes for smoking, but despite the popularity – and the fact its negative effects don’t affect him – she wishes he would quit. Her father used to smoke cannabis, leaving him with a nasty grate in his coughs. It just _bothers_ her now.

Armin is at the room’s desk toying with Sasha’s wooden bird, hand-carved for her by Jean (as his new way of easing stress and anger, and much to Armin’s subsequent surprise, Jean is very, _very_ talented for only working on his technique for a mere two years). He inspects the blunt edges and the broad details, the smoothed beak and the chiseled pattern on the wings.

“So what hasn’t he told us?”

Armin knows Mikasa is talking about Eren. He casts her a glance, bites his lip. “I’m not testifying to anything, Mika. I’m only telling you what Sasha said because you deserve to know, but she isn’t very sure if what she’s concluded is accurate or if it’s simply theoretical.”

“Sasha is intuitive.”

“Yes but, it’s just…I don’t want to go around declaring what might not be the truth.” He sets the bird down on the desk top and turns sapphire orbs to the Eurasian at the window. Her steely gaze does not falter. He likes that certainty about her, but it forms a veil of doubt in place of how well she might handle the news. “Promise me, at least: you can’t tell anyone.”

Mikasa finally looks at him. “Why not?”

“Mikasa, promise me.”

“…Okay. I swear. Now tell me what Eren is lying about.”

Armin holds her intense stare as if he’s challenging a mountain lion, shackles raised and palms sweating under the tension. He doesn’t know how best to relay his information. He doesn’t know what kind of profound effect this will have on her, on him, on the rest of the team when they’ll inevitably find out.

“He-”

The door swings open so abruptly Armin nearly jumps out of his own skin. Levi enters with his fingers still curled around the handle, obsidian eyes gazing around the room. He senses the pressure in the atmosphere. “Did I walk in on a funeral?”

“No, sir, you just startled us,” Armin replies awkwardly. “Actually, I was just…”

“You were just leaving so I can speak with Mikasa in private.”

Armin swallows the rock in his throat. Goddamn Levi’s horrible sense of timing. “Yes, I was just leaving, apparently.” He gives his best friend a curt nod and squeezes around the general, disappearing down the hall. Levi kicks the door shut in the blond’s wake.

Mikasa shifts around in her spot cautiously, crosses her arms beneath her breasts and leans herself back against the window, shoulders flat against the panes to push her chest out. He steps up to her swiftly, hovering several paces away.

“Is there something important you want to ask of me?” she asks him incredulously.

He closes the distance between them but manages to salvage several inches of space, like two magnets drawn together and separated by a thick panel of glass. His hand reaches up to brush a forefinger across her thin scar, move her lengthy bangs from her face.

“Is there something wrong with wanting to spend time with you”—he rubs the pad of his thumb along the lower plush of her bottom lip, guiding her head down towards his parted mouth—“ _Mikasa?_ ”

They meet briefly, a sweet, tender melding, like fitting two stray puzzle pieces together, every line and crevice designed to fit perfectly. He pulls back just as swiftly, retaining an air of command as he remembers that they shouldn’t be this close (even if he simply can’t help himself).

“It’s a shame you’re so goddamn beautiful,” he admits, relishing in the gleam in her eyes. “If only we weren’t separated by rank, I’d have to marry you on the spot.”

“Don’t leave out age.”

“I’m not old yet.” He traces his fingertips up her side, following a map he invents in his mind that glosses over every sweet spot he’s found on her abdomen. “Young enough for you, at the very least. Besides, what’s a fifteen year difference in a world where you can die at any moment?”

She smiles despite his morbid sense of flirting. “It’s a shame you’re so goddamn short, I’d have to get you a stepstool to put the ring on my finger.”

“But you’d say yes.”

“Guess we’ll find out some other time. I have a different matter that I have to attend to.”

She watches him back away and almost misses the closeness he provides, but his concerned gaze turns to the door. Her worry sets in immediately. “Is everything alright, Levi?”

“Not quite.”

“You can tell me anything.” She closes the gap between them again, settling one hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you can tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s…nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing, okay?” He’s lying. She know it. “Let’s forget about it for now. Do you want to take a walk with me?”

“Where?” He doesn’t respond for a prolonged moment that makes her stomach shift with unease. Instead she exchanges the question for an affirmative, for something that doesn’t leave every nerve in her body tingling with anxiety. “Yes, let’s.”

Wordlessly, he leads her out of her room and remains eerily silent as they trek across the castle towards the lower levels, an area Mikasa hasn’t been to since Eren first scared her out of the dungeons. She has little reason for passing that way to begin with, not to mention it brings up awful memories about the last few years.

_It’s been so quiet at night when I can’t hear Eren screaming._

“Where are we going?”

“I just want to walk with you,” he responds swiftly, catching her hand in his. He squeezes, further unnerving her despite how she clamps hold with both hands in return. She’s concerned with his unusual behavior and quietly prays to an old Japanese goddess her mother worshiped that this has nothing to do with Eren.

They release each other just as they turn into the corridor leading to the jailing area. Hange and Moblit appear in their peripheral vision, hovering near the maw of the entrance into the upper dungeons where they’re keeping Annie. The Commander mentions something to Moblit as she passes a rope to him.

“I have something I must attend to,” Levi reiterates, refusing to look at Mikasa, “so if anyone asks where I am, change the subject or tell them I’m busy so they don’t bother looking for me. Say nothing about the dungeon or Annie. Even if _Eren_ asks.” He pauses to mull over his last statement before amending it correctly. “ _Especially_ if _Eren_ asks.”

Mikasa chooses to avoid pressing him with questions and nods briskly, taking her leave, pacing off down the hall in the other direction.

_I should have just told you._

Levi shakes off the guilt that gnaws in his chest (or perhaps, it’s the pain from his lungs again) before he approaches Hange. She presses her lips into a thin line. “Are you sure you want to do this, Levi?” she questions with an uncertain momentum in her voice. They’re all uncertain these days.

Levi peers into the darkness of the stairwell. “We have no choice. You’ve tried your methods and given her a chance, but now Eren is losing himself the longer we wait.”

“…Alright, Levi. Alright.”

“Cold feet?”

“No,” she mutters, gathering her nerves with a sharp intake of breath, “but she’s just a child…”

“Then pretend you’re beating up Nile.”

Hange would have found that funny if she wasn’t pitying Annie for being a _child_. She can’t forgive the female shifter for murdering dozens of people, no, but she also can’t bring herself to hate the blonde any more than the people who turned her into a spy. Turned a _child_ into a _monster_. A goddamn child no older than Hange had been when she first –

_Enough about that. We need answers._

“Okay, let’s go.”

* * *

 

.

.

.

There’s a sickening crack of snapping bone that reverberates into the obsidian void of the jail cell. The scent of copper poisons the dank air and he can taste it on his tongue – it’s filling his vision as he draws his fist back, driving it into the girl’s face with the same force as before. Again. **_Again._** He can feel his fingers splinter in synch with her eye socket; he’s fueled with suppressed rage and bitter vengeance, but the way her flesh seals at her breaks fills him with a sadistic giddiness when he remembers the corpses of the comrades she murdered, of the friends he lost to this traitor.

“Levi.”

A surge of reality knocks him back down to earth – to the musky cell and his throbbing knuckles and the girl chained to the wall – and he recedes, rigid body settling as he steps away from her limp form. “Talk,” he coerces, removing a set of knuckle braces from his pockets. “Tell me everything you remember, or I’ll keep beating you until you choke on your own blood.”

She spits a glob of crimson to her right, splattering the stone in vermillion paint. It steams. Evaporates. “I don’t… I don’t know what you want from me,” she mumbles, earning another strike across the bruising right side of her face. Suddenly she lashes against her chains in attempt to pull herself free, but they hold firm, keeping her arms splayed outwards and her neck roped to the floor so she can’t move from her knees, only hang limply and wait peevishly to embrace unconsciousness.

“Stop fighting,” Hange coerces with a suggestive tug on the neck rope, tightening the loop around the prisoner’s neck, “or I’m going to choke you.”

“I don’t know what you want from me!” The shifter screeches this time. “I don’t know what _any_ of you want from me!”

Levi hesitates, as if considering the truth in her words. But it’s not that simple. He _needs_ answers and she _needs_ to pay for what she’s done. “…I see.” He grips the braces between his forefinger and thumb, passing them to Hange when she returns to his side. “Take over. I’m getting filth on my clothes.”

The woman is no longer wearing glasses, so her cerise eyes glisten with a hazy bloodlust bordering pure insanity. The torches from the hall outside offer just enough light to ignite her rubescent gaze like fire – she slips the braces on, running her tongue along the serrated edges. Her flesh splits, secreting maroon ooze onto her hands. “Sorry about this,” she utters finally, “it’s only a little personal though.”

“We need information as soon as possible,” Levi reminds her promptly.

Hange grapples the opposing girl by her saffron hair, matted with blood and sweat. “This will be over in a few more hours,” she tells the battered shifter, curling her fingers into a tight fist. The images of decimated soldiers reel around in her mind – which are gradually ebbing away as sinister, psychopathic thoughts consume her. Thoughts that would make a convict cringe. “Don’t fidget too much.”

This time, when the crack resounds again, Annie Leonhardt’s screams can be heard from upstairs.

* * *

.

.

.

Eren is returning to Annie’s cell because he can’t stop fucking thinking about her.

He’s spent most of the day tending to the gardens in attempt to busy his hands and to occupy his thoughts, but everything reminds him of that traitor locked up in the cellar. The plants brought up the past, when they would sneak off into the forest just to relish in the other’s presence. The grass felt more firm than the training ground fields, where they first kissed…

There he goes again, thinking about _her_.

Even the frigid presence of the stone walls vibrates to life with the friction of his torment, how the cold mineral is like her past self, rigid and stern and still capable of being a foundation for his strength. She was never one for many words but he could spark a conversation so easily with her, or lay with his head on her stomach beneath starlight and feel her pulse through her skin as she ran slender fingers through his untamed hair.

He can’t get her off his mind. 

He recollects the time when they would spar and how it would feel like lightning meeting earth, ponders the way her eyes have gone from firm and stoic to bewildered and frantic like she’s lost herself along with her memories, and does a double-take when he considers how she might truly never be the same Annie he loved –

_But she has to be the same Annie._

And that’s when he hears her screaming.

Panic immediately sets in and he races for the dungeon. Moblit is at the maw of the entry way, a rifle swung against his shoulder as he stands guard, though he visibly winces as the shrieks echo out from the abyss behind him. Eren is blocked as he attempts to hurtle inside.

“What the hell is going on?!” he snaps.

“I can’t let you through, Eren!” Moblit exclaims, grasping Eren by his jacket. “Quit thrashing! I can’t let anyone down there right now, Commander’s orders!”

“Fuck. _That_!” Eren slams his foot down on the guard’s, earning a sharp yelp, and Moblit has no choice but to trade his hold on the young soldier for grabbing his throbbing toes.

The shifter barrels downstairs, nearly tripping down the stone slabs of steps as the torches offer poor illumination. He nearly shoots by the two additional soldiers guarding the front of the far back chambers, which are normally sealed off because they serve only as torture rooms.

And that’s when Eren realizes what’s happening.

The soldiers shouts at him and as he attempts to bypass them they make a grab for his limbs, hoping to immobilize him before he progresses any further. Eren flings his head around and slams his forehead into one soldier’s nose, the resounding _crack_ reverberating off the sodden walls. He collapses in agony, allowing Eren to reel his leg back and side kick the other soldier in the stomach, sending her stumbling backwards.

“Let my through!” He demands as he races for the cell. The guards are shouting at him but they can’t stop him and as soon as Levi opens his mouth to issue an order (preferably one along the lines of “Get that fucking brat out of here”) Eren appears in the gateway.

Annie is barely conscious and he can’t recognize her through all that blood. It has spread up Hange’s arms, leaves a distinct splatter on the front of Levi’s shirt, and has formed a puddle at Annie’s knees, soaking greedily into her scuffed pants.

“ANNIE!”

They don’t stop him. He sprints up to her and lands on his knees, gently grasping her head in his palms and tilting her chin up to look at him. Her eyes stare absently at nothing as the left, which is swollen thick with bruising, steams and amends itself anew. “Oh, no…Annie? _Annie_. Hey, look at me!”

Her eyes flicker at the familiar concern in his voice. “E…r…Eren…”

The rage subsumes him like collapsing rocks, crushing every part of him that is wired into common sense. He glares back at his commanding officers, the same way he would view a Titan, with erenite fires and a hate that runs cold in his blood. “What did you do to her?!”

The officers from before appears in the doorway with Moblit directly behind them. “Sorry Commander!” Moblit exclaims, “we tried to-!”

Hange raises her hand to him. “Leave us.” She hesitates, waiting for the order to register, before they finally (reluctantly) turn the other way and make off for the other end of the hall. The soldier with the broken nose mutters a handful of swears that would make Levi proud.

Then, the room pitches into silence.

“Eren…” Hange exhales gently, as if stalling to consider her next woods. “We had no choice.”

“ _Bullshit!_ That is such bullshit!”

“We’re desperate for answers, Eren.”

“And did you get them?!”

Hange and Levi exchange glances. “No,” Hange replies placidly, as if she didn’t just spend the last few hours beating a girl to the brink of death, “we didn’t get anything out of her, unfortunately for us and fortunately for her. But because her information is crucial, she will remain in her cell until further notice and visitations will continue as normal unless I decide otherwise.”

“You understand Eren,” Levi remarks, _states_. “You know we do what we have to.”

Eren grasps the chains at her wrists. “Just – that _doesn’t_ – just give me the keys! Give me the fucking _keys_!”

Levi picks the key ring up from the stool to his left and takes the liberty of unshackling her bonds as Eren severs the rope around her neck with the issued combat knife he keeps in his boot. He slides the blade back in with ease and manages to catch her against him, dragging one arm around his neck.

“Takes her back to her cell,” Hange orders tonelessly, flattened gaze fixed on the other side of the cell, somewhere far away from them.

Eren helps her up and sweeps an arm under her knees, bringing her bridal style against his chest. “You’ll be okay,” he mutters against her matted hair.

Levi doesn’t bother making eye contact with Hange as he guides Eren out of the chamber and towards Annie’s cell. The other soldiers (and shitty guards, now that he considers it) are long since gone, which eases Levi as he pops open the door to let them in.

Eren sets Annie on her bed, gently, so unlike him it unnerves her. She glances up at him through swollen, slotted eyelids.

“I know I’ve done horrible things.”

He swallows drily. “Not right now Annie, just…rest, okay? Forget about everything.”

“No, I…I know I’ve done some very, very terrible things. I don’t remember what they were but by everything that’s happened I’m starting to wonder if I deserve this…all the torment and the torture and…” She seems to doze for a moment before snapping back into consciousness. “Something is telling me that I’m right where I belong. I want to go back into my past and amend my wrongs, but what’s done is done and all I can think is that maybe I’m getting what I deserve.”

He brushes the bangs from her battered face, but he does not respond to that. He simply can’t.

“Do you know who killed my mother?” she whispers, before her eyes flicker and she goes limp against the bedding.

Eren checks her pulse to make sure she’s still alive – (and he wouldn’t doubt it, because he’s sure his heart stopped a few times while being beaten by Levi on trial) – before he feels Levi’s firm grasp on his shoulder. It startles him for a split second, because suddenly he's back to himself; just as quickly as his anger had surged forward is it now dissipated, sizzled in his chest like charcoal.

“Eren, I need a word with you.”

“I’m sorry,” he utters under his breath before clearing his throat. Speaks up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out on you or Commander Hange.”

“No, it’s not about that. There’s something I need to tell you, because only Hange knows right now, and I think you should know too.”

Eren rises to his feet as the general in question paces towards the barred window above the bed so he can catch a glimpse of the waning moon behind the passing clouds. “L-Levi…are you okay?”

“No.”

“ _Levi_?”

“I’m dying, Eren.”

They stand in collective silence, Eren absently observing the way the moonlight dances across Levi’s petite figure, Levi glaring at the merciless sky. “Oh,” is all that finally manages to escape the younger soldier’s lips. He swallows again, like there’s a goddamn rock lodged in it. “But – you can’t, you’re – you can’t be – you can’t, you can’t you _can’t_ -” Eren doesn’t know how big this world is but he’s so certain it’s collapsing on him and he can’t _breathe_. "How long?"

"How long what?"

"Have you known? _Do you have left?"_

"A while. And if I'm _lucky_ , I'll have a while to go."

“Did”—Eren steels his quaking nerves, recollects his crumbling sense of self—“Did you tell Mikasa?”

“No. I wanted to, but I couldn't bring myself to admit to such a fucking thing.”

“ _Don’t_. At least, not yet. _Please_. I don’t want something like this to hurt her. She's already been through so much, she doesn't - you don't - neither of you deserve this fucking bullshit!”

Levi nods. Just _nods_. “I had to tell you, before it was too late.”

And from somewhere behind him, Levi recognizes the acute sound of Eren choking on his sobs.

 _This world is so cruel,_ Mikasa would have said, and Levi agrees for nearly the hundredth time in his whole godforsaken life.

_So, so fucking cruel._


	5. Let Go Control

“Is there no way out of the mind?”

-Sylvia Plath **  
**

* * *

 

**MALEVOLENCE**

**Chapter 5: Let Go Control**

(“Break down and die, Cowards!” – Commander Hange Zoe, to her team members in a fit of psychological torment)

* * *

.

.

.

The jail cell door doesn’t open for another three days after Annie awakens from her sleep. She isn’t conceptually aware of how long she’s been unconscious, but according to the guard that delivers dinner under the slot in the door Annie hasn’t been active in almost four days. And thankfully, when she checks herself, every wound in her face and on her torso has healed into pristine condition.

It bothers the blonde to know that at any given time a soldier can take a leisurely stroll down to her cell and break every bone in her body again. She doesn’t consider how Eren might not be able to save her this time, or at the very least, intercept with the interrogation, but she does consider how the next time might leave her unconscious for good. Dead? No, of course not…because they _need_ her, right?

She’s treading on a thin line between life and death with these people, so when the door finally opens and an unfamiliarly familiar person enters, she anticipates the worst of the situation.

The boy who makes his appearance stands a whole head taller than her and has blond hair that he has to keep tied back in a loose ponytail so it doesn’t dip into his crystalline eyes, despite the glasses sitting on the ridge of his nose. She wonders if the old her might have known him from somewhere.

_“D… t – …good person.”_

The voice echoes in her mind, fractured by her fragmented memories.

_“Do you think I’m a good person?”_

Why is this rising up now of all times?

The soldier raises his hands cautiously when she rapidly presses back against the wall across from him. In his right grasp is a half loaf of bread, the other, a worn leather-back novel. “It’s alright Annie, it’s just me…uh, wait, do you even _know_ who I am?”

She narrows her glare. “You were in the room during my examination.”

“Yep, that’s me! Armin Arlert.” He finally lowers his arms to lock the cell behind him, leaving the keys on the hook near the exit. When he turns back to her she’s several paces away with her gaze traversing his figure before fixating on his own eyes. “I, uh, didn’t mean to intrude. I found out through the grape vine that Eren hasn’t been down to see you in a while and figured I’d drop in to say hi myself.”

“…Is that bread for me?”

He seems startled, as if he’d forgotten that it was in his hand. “Oh, yes, here. It’s a bit of a peace offering.”

She accepts it graciously – not that she thanks him, but he knows Annie has always been grateful for more than she’s ever let on – and treks over to her bed to perch on the haphazard sheets. “So, you came to say hi. Or is it more than that?”

“I can leave if you want me to.”

She bites into her bread as her attention redirects to the way his thumb glosses over the novel. “What’s that book?”

Armin stares at it before absently changing the subject. “Can I sit down?” She inclines her head as if nodding reluctantly, and watches him like a prowling bobcat as he makes his way over to her bed and settles at the edge, keeping a respective distance. He turns to her, displaying the book in both palms so she can read the title. “It’s a poetry novel someone gave to me. It’s my favorite.”

“Poetry?”

“It’s…it’s like sentences that are fragmented to form a story in more creative ways, like rhyming.”

She traces her fingertip over the letting herself this time. “The Beast Cannot Be Recognized.”

“Novels are rare because of how hard it is to get paper with limited resources, but some people sell them if they have tree farms of their own.” He realizes he’s about to set off on a ramble and directs himself back onto the topic. “This is the only copy of its kind. I was more than surprised when…I received it.”

She takes another bite of the loaf, swallows drily. “Who’d you get it from?”

His stare seems to hollow at her remark. “Ah, you wouldn’t know her. This was a long while ago… I was supposed to only borrow it but, she”—he runs his fingertips over the engraved letters—“she, uh, never got to ask for it back.”

“Can you tell me about her?” Annie asks, engrossed in the surreal emotions that pantomime smiles onto his face.

“Maybe some other time.”

“At least read me the first page then. I’m curious to know how good it is.”

Armin appears to consider her request by the way his mouth hangs slightly opened, caught between a denial and an acceptance. Suddenly, his lips curve into a smile. “Okay, but only because you’re curious. I don’t think I’ve read this to anyone but Eren and Mikasa, and…”

“Me?”

“You too, of course.” He opens the cover to the first chapter, the edges aged with use. “Do you ever miss someone so much, you hold on to the littlest thing that can remind you of them?”

“I don’t know if there’s anyone I miss like that,” Annie replies promptly, shifting closer to him. “Besides, I didn’t say I wanted to listen to this whole thing. I’m merely _curious_ and want to know if it’s really any good.”

Armin chuckles softly before clearing his throat. “In that case, I’ll surrender and read you chapter one…”

 .

_There was this young girl from Stohess who had joined the Scouting Legion the year before the battle of Trost, the only graduate of the top ten to do such a thing despite the thirty others that volunteered to wear the Wings themselves. She had been ridiculed by the undergraduates, but received no initial defense from the other elite nine despite their relatively close bonds with one another over the course of the three years. The Scouting Legion was more than glad to have a rank 3 in their numbers, and after only two months, the girl was promoted straight onto Hange’s team – the youngest member they’ve had since the Fall of Maria, at the age of only fifteen._

_Armin finds her in the archives the day of the vernal equinox, sitting by herself at a far back table beneath an open window, with her nose shoved into the gatherings of a leather-bound novel, the leaves caressed with the burnished gold of fine age. She exhales gently, almost wistfully, smiling bashfully down at the contents of the page._

_He doesn’t plan on introducing himself to her, even though he’s seen her around._

_She sits up in her chair to relieve the tension in her straining neck, lifting her elbow from the thick folder beside her – the springtide breeze rushes through the window, forcing the folder apart so the papers explode outwards and scatter. “Shit,” she hisses, placing the book face-down as her marker and nearly tripping over the leg of the table as she scrambles to retrieve all her documents._

_She picks up several handfuls before the unfamiliar soldier kneels down beside her, collecting the other spare sheets in three scoops. “Ah, thank you,” she utters, accepting the pages from him._

_Their fingers brush, so lightly it’s barely noticeable, but to Armin it feels like she’s hit him with a cannon ball. An unusual warmth blossoms in the pit of his stomach, rising up as a blush that permeates his pallid cheeks. “Sure, yeah, it’s uh – it’s no problem.”_

_“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.” She sets the folder down, utilizing another book as a paperweight to keep the flaps closed, and reclaims her previous seat. “Are you one of those new recruits?” she continues when he doesn’t entertain her previous comment, “the group that went through that Hell in Trost?”_

_Armin rises up steadily despite the shaking in his legs. “Yes, ma’am.”_

_“You don’t have to be so formal,” she amends, “besides, I’m not old enough to be a ‘ma’am’ just yet. You can call me Nifa. What’s your name?”_

_“Armin. Armin Arlert.”_

_“Armin Arlert… That’s cute.” She faintly smiles in response to his flustered look. “I’m sorry about what happened that day.”_

_“You don’t have to be sorry. It wasn’t your fault, or anything.”_

_“I know, but it’s a shame to see such young lives wasted under the instruction of our corrupt government.” She gestures to the seat across from her, and he hesitates a split moment before he decidedly accepts her offer and places himself in the chair. “What brings you to the library?”_

_“I was just looking for something new to read.”_

_“So I’m in the presence of another avid scholar,” she responds observantly, giving him a broad smile that makes his heart melt into his stomach. He visibly shifts uncomfortably. She almost giggles at that, how innocent he behaviors despite witnessing horrors she couldn’t possibly comprehend. “How do you feel about poetry?”_

_“My mother used to read it to me when I was a child,” comes the bashful reply, though he manages to briefly catch her gaze before instantly diverting it to the table top. He swallows. She makes his throat swell with anticipation to the point that he wonders if he’s feeling light-headed simply because he can’t breathe. “She used to tell me how poetry can convey emotions in a way that makes every word important, like every passionate point is emphasized through a simple context. Like describing a color without using its name.”_

_“She sounds like a wise woman.”_

_Armin’s stare appears to flicker briefly, as if he’s lost in the memory of something more sinister. “Yes, she certainly was.”_

_Hoping to delude from the subject of his family, she lifts up the novel that still remains spread across the table. “Here, why don’t you take this then?” She passes him the book, skimming his fingertips with her own. He pretends he isn’t bothered by the contact and flips it over as she rises from her seat, gathering the papers into her arms. Back then it was in mint condition: ‘The Beast Cannot Be Recognized’. “It’s my personal book I purchased at a Stohess market.” She gently brushes his hand, studying the way he quivers under her essence. “You can keep it as long as you like.”_

_This time, when they touch again, it lingers. “Are you sure?” he asks. She’s making his throat run dry. “It’s, uh, yours.”_

_“It’s no problem.”_

_They’re fingers are crossed. “I, uh, thank you. I’ve never considered reading much poetry since being recruited, but I’m sure I’ll like this book!”_

_“Never read poetry?” she retorts, although she isn’t as surprised as much as she is piqued with curiosity. She traces a circle on the back of his hand with her nail. “What a shame…” Just like that, she releases him from her trance with a flourish, gyrating on her heels, and quietly exits, leaving the book with him, and a tingling on his flesh like a permanent ghosting of her touch in the shape of a figure 8._

.

Armin flips the page to chapter 2 when he realizes Annie is laying down now, her head sunken into the pillow, fast asleep. She had fallen unconscious sometime in the last half hour during his recital, and he doesn’t doubt the fact it could be from malnutrition. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much of a say in what happens to her down in this cellar, not that he’d be certain what to say about it even if he did have the option to speak his voice. It bothers him to entertain the thought that he could, in fact, pity her. Or feel sorry for her. He isn’t sure which.

He cautiously spreads her haphazard sheets across her too thin figure before taking his leave. He’s sure to lock the door behind him.

As he works his way up the staircase towards the exit, he can hear Nifa’s voice in the back of his mind, echoing like a phantom of his inherently forgotten past. He remembers her like a vivid dream, like the summer heat that tans his neck or the winter frost that numbs his fingers, but her lingering touch is ebbing away like low river tides.

_“She’s cute,” Jean remarks snidely, prodding Armin’s elbow with his own._

_“I – I don’t know what you’re talking about.”_

_“Don’t deny it. I see you looking at her whenever you two are in the same room.”_

_“Knock it off, it’s nothing.”_

Armin pauses mid-stride, and even though he’s thinking of such a silly memory, something so trivial it shouldn’t hold any significant meaning to his present world, he can’t help but wonder why the tears are creeping down his face.

_Levi is found injured, half of Hange’s team slaughtered, and he takes a long while to stand on the roof over the body with the mutilated face. It feels too surreal, as if he’s been living in a dream for so long it’s impossible to separate his reality from fiction. He deftly recollects the time he read the book to her, when she leaned over halfway through his recount to kiss him. The time they rearranged books in the library and laid in the sunlight streaming through the window with novels ringed around them like halos. The time he clumsily kissed her and bumped their noses._

_“I’m sorry about Nifa.”_

_Armin recognizes Mikasa’s voice but doesn’t bother to adhere to it, refusing to dare meet her gaze. She doesn’t have to see him to know – by the quivering in his hands, the coiling in his shoulders, the descended incline in his neck – that he’s faking being okay, that he’s pretending this sight isn’t like a swift punch to his gut, that the cruelty of the world is curdling inside of him like he’s composed of corroding metal._

_She appears behind him, sliding her arms around his neck and drawing him back against her chest, leaning her forehead into the wing of his collar bone._

_“What a shame,” he mutters weakly._

_Wetness begins to soak through her sleeve. He inhales sharply, swallows and exhales a shaky breath that shoots rebounding tremors down the length of his body._

Armin draws the book to his chest, the crinkling pages smell like musk, the cover like dried leather. Then he sighs, pressing the novel closed and leaning his cheek into the text block, allowing his fingers to trace a figure-8 on the back of his other hand. He breaks. He trembles and sobs and collapses to the steps cursing the cruelty of the world and grasping at the fading memories of how her lips felt and how her voice was honey to his ears and how she made him feel like everything would be alright in the end.

“What a shame… what a goddamn shame…”

 

* * *

 

_“Can I sit here?”_

_She passively glances the opposing girl over before shrugging just as nonchalantly. “Knock yourself out.” The mess hall should be packed, she thinks, noticing almost instantly that there isn’t a single soul residing within the building besides herself, and evidently, this black-haired girl across from her._

_“You’re Annie, right?”_

_“Yes.” This is strange. “And you are?”_

_“I’m Mina Carolina! We’re bunk mates, so I figured I’d come over an introduce myself!”_

_Annie glimpses at the girl again, but instead of a smile, she meets the cold, dejected figure of a broken body without a head, sprawled across the ground with every limb bent inhumanely with rigor mortis. She blinks, the image doesn’t fade. She’s met with silence._

_Then, screaming. A shrill sonance of shrieking within a voided world that frightens her the way nothing else could._

_Finally, there’s that voice again. “I was hoping we could be friends!”_

_Annie wants to vomit at the sight, nearly does. The words of reply escape her lips to substitute her desire to shout, to wail, about the corpse broken at her feet. “I’m not very interested in friends. I prefer to keep to myself.”_

_“Well, you talk to that Reiner guy.”_

_“We had one exchange.” She wipes the blood from her hands onto the material of her sweater and prays that the screaming will nullify. “So, Mina was it?”_

_“Yep!”_

_“You don’t seem like the Titan-slaying type.”_

_“I’m sure it’s an awful job, **but it’s best to keep a head on your shoulders** about such decisions. I know, for sure, that I really want to join the Scouting Legion! What are you aiming for-”_

“Annie?”

She abruptly awakens to the screeching of the jail cell door. For a moment she grasps at the tendrils of the dream before it completely scatters into nothingness, but when the name of the girl in her dream slips her thoughts, she forfeits her vain attempts. Finally, she tosses over to catch a glimpse of her visitor standing several paces away, and is less than thrilled to meet his erenite gaze. “Eren… it’s been seven days. Where have you been?”

“Away.” He glances her over. “Away from you, anyway, just to clear my head. A lot of…uh…shit happened. Are you feeling any better?”

She nods, observing his awkward gait as he sets the keys on the hook near the door. “Have you come to see if I remember anything else?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

He hesitates at her answer, but doesn’t seem to get as mad as he used to about her blatant responses. Instead of yelling or scolding her, he passes over to the edge of her bed and perches at her side. “Listen, I want to try something.”

“Eren-?”

“Don’t.” He grabs her chin and tilts her face to look up at him. “Not a word out of you. Just go with it, okay? And if you don’t like it, I’ll stop.”

He kisses her gently, something that surprises her because how can someone so bitter be so tender? How can someone fueled by primal anger be capable of touching her so sweetly? And why does it ignite a familiar urge within her, when she can’t remember her past, and subsequently, the significance he meant to her or her to him? The events that unfolded around them both have corroded into a blank canvas in her fractured mind _– so why does his gentle nature feel so familiar?_

He presses against her once more after drawing up briefly for air, this time biting down on her lower lip and sucking the plush of flesh so it swells in his grip. Her nerves respond positively and she moans quietly into his mouth.

_Have we done this before?_

Eren pliantly melds his lips with her jaw and his stubble digs into her immediate margins of flesh. He traces patterns on her pallid skin, working at every inch of her until he finds a spot just beneath the pulse point of her neck that sends a jolt through her system. She groans, sliding her hands up along his shoulders, but he immediately pulls back with a start as if scathed by fire.

“No touching,” he says placidly, undoing his belt and weaving it through his jean loops. She lets him wind the leather strap around her wrists and pull her arms up, threading it through the bars of her bed frame, tucking the metal latch into place. “I want you to remember.”

He bunches up her shirt, exposing her bare chest to him in the dim light of the cell room. She strains against her bonds but finds herself biting her tongue to refrain from speaking. His palms massage her breasts, mouth leaning down towards one nipple and blowing graciously against the roseate bud. It perks in the cold gusto. He kisses it, and then swallows it, earning a small gasp of what he assumes is surprise, maybe even pleasure.

He sucks on her gently as he strokes her surrounding skin, always so fucking _gentle_ , not even unsurely but just so goddamn _delicately_. The heat ignites in her lower gut, and then in something lower than that – she snaps her legs closed almost reflexively but ends up constricting his intrusive waist instead. He switches to her other nipple, lapping at her swelled parcel of flesh before biting down with his front teeth. It elicits a thrust up from her hips and he graciously presses his bulge to her clit, meeting her for every following press.

A moment later her abandons her chest and trails his lips down the centerfold of her body to a sensitive spot directly above her naval, and it elicits a guttural groan of appreciation. He digs his nails into the junctures of her hips.

“Don’t you remember this, Annie?” he whispers against her pallid skin.

She bites her lip.

“Will you tell me the truth now?”

He unbuttons the peak of her jeans and slides them off with her undershorts in the same fluid motion, leaving her exposed in the frigid air of her cell. She shivers, recollecting something so faintly in the back of her mind she isn’t sure it’s supposed to be there.

His hands part her thighs and he settles between her, kissing her inner flesh. “W-Wait,” she mutters quickly, her cheeks brushed red with heat.

“Want me to stop?”

“No – I mean – something’s coming to me.”

“An orgasm if you’ll let me finish,” he quips, but his intense gaze holds her steady as he expects her to continue with her sentiment.

“Grass. Stars. I…I remember that we’ve done this before. Once.”

“A few times,” he amends. “Is that it?”

“Yes, for now.”

“That’s good. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Just…tell me if you want me to stop, and I will, okay?”

She nods and relaxes against the bed, the tension in her thighs unwinding. To be honest, she recalls only a sliver of the emotions that this induces within her and she’s more intrigued by the direction it’s going. He lowers his tongue to her throbbing clit, massaging the tense nerve with precision. She gasps, eases into a moan. “ _Shit_ ,” she utters the same way she had the first time he went down on her all those years back.

He slides two fingers inside of her easily, pressing up against her g-spot as he sucks her clit to distract her from his intrusion. She bucks, tenses up again, and attempts to snap her legs closed when an elicit jolt of pleasure rides through her core. He’s positioned so she can’t hold him back, not that she really wants to anyway.

Eren runs his thumb in a circle around the small nerve bundle, feeling the way she convulses around him. He almost finds it funny, but tells himself that he simply wants her to _remember_ and this seems to be working; he draws back to lift off his shirt and easily slides off his jeans and under shorts, reaching down to give himself several experimental strokes. She gazes up at him wistfully. For a brief moment she recalls the stars again, then raging water rapids of a river and croaking frogs.

He climbs back on top, kisses her gently. Then proceeds.

He pushes into her, gives her a moment to breathe, and begins to rock. The acute pain ebbs into pleasure with his gentle thrusts; heat pools into the pit of her stomach and she can’t resist the moans clawing up her throat. Even though she can’t recollect what, exactly, _this_ is, the terms or the uses or the obligations or what came after – she knows that it makes her feel _whole_. It permeates the gorge in her body like liquefied steel. Every thrust shatters a memory, leaving an artificial depth in its place that merges with the comforting darkness.

Her thoughts do not matter. Her mind does not worry. She only focuses on the here and now, on the inferno erupting through her body with every stroke, his dire ushers of her name and her heartbeat like smashing metals.

His fingers wrap around her neck.

He isn’t tight or threatening, and his thrusts are still steady, but the pad of his right thumb is pressing to her throat and the nail of his other one is digging into her pulse point. “Tell me you remember this,” he whispers, pulling completely out of her and driving forward again. She cries out in response to the immediate surge of pleasure that shoves her towards the edge of something she cannot understand but thinks she might have felt before. “ _Tell me this meant something to you_.”

_“Eren…!”_

His digits envelope her completely. “ _Don’t_ ,” he hisses menacingly, “don’t you _dare_.”

That means _something_ to him regardless of what it means to her, and she doesn’t need her memories to know it’s _something_ that runs deep under his skin. She tosses her head back, exposing her throat to him like handing him the blade he plans to kill her with. “Is _this_ what you wanted, _Eren_ … _?_ ”

She’s messing with him. He clamps down, not too hard, but if she tested his patience he might just break her. “I said **_don’t_**. I will snap your freaking _neck_.”

Annie wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him flush against her so he’s forced to release her and press his palms to either side of her head to keep himself upright. His lips are hovering dangerously close to hers, to the poison on her breath, to her lethal words. The serpentine grin in her eyes lures him inwards to the unknown. She rolls her hips up, gasping, but never breaks eye contact, dominating him even from her helpless position beneath him.

“Am _I_ what you wanted”—she bucks against him again and earns a satisfying hiss _—“Eren?”_

And he loses it. Loses himself. Always, _always_ loses himself to _her_.

He kisses her feverishly before he moves back to the tender points of her neck, lapping and biting and sucking, hands grasping her breasts to drive her back towards the edge, picking up his pace so he’s hitting her in all her right spots and she’s thrusting up to meet him, her collapsing walls pulling him in with every welcoming clench. “I want you,” he whispers under heated pants, “I need you to remember, Annie. I need to know if…”

She comes with a throaty cry; the orgasm is explosive, every muscle in her toned torso shuddering with relief and her walls constricting him possessively. Her mind kicks back into gear a split second later… and suddenly she is _aware_ – of her crashing heartbeat like pulses of thunder in her chest, oozing lightning into her veins, of her irked sense of vulnerability, of the buzzing after-pleasure in her brain.

He thrusts into her several more times until he feels her settling down before pulling out. His hand grasps his shaft and only two strokes later he releases across her stomach, muffling his moans in the crook of her tender neck.

They take a moment to recollect. Annie glides her fingers through his bister locks, detangling the unkempt ends with relative ease, and drags her nails across his scalp soothingly – or, rather, she assumes it’s soothing because he relaxes into her touch. He settles at her side, his head on her sternum so he can hear it: the drumming of her heart, this _living_ heart, this _human_ heart, _her_ heart. Oh, how he missed her. Missed _this_.

“Eren,” she starts tentatively, as if crossing onto thin ice, “you smell like… like a burnt wood. Cedar, I think it’s called.” She feels him tense at the mention of it and opts for her original train of though. “What… what were we before all of this?”

“So you really don’t remember…”

“…I’m sorry.”

Eren suddenly gets up, tucking himself back into his pants and zipping up his fly, locating his discarded shirt several feet away despite the dim of the room, and throws it on. He unfastens the band of the belt, sliding it from around her wrists, and threads it through his loops once more. All the while he keeps his gaze focused on everything that isn’t her.

“Wait, where are you going?” she questions, awkwardly wiping the questionable fluids from her abdomen with the sheet.

He treks over to the cell door, grasping the bars in his hands. Still he doesn’t look at her.

“This is how it feels to have you leave me: broken, betrayed, and empty. _Sorry_ isn’t going to fix anything. _Sorry_ isn’t going to excuse all the horrible crimes you’ve committed. _Sorry_ isn’t going to set things right between us.”

“So what the hell was this supposed to accomplish?!”

He barks a harsh laugh that echoes through the stale cell air. It rattles her like she’s a jar of shattered glass. “I had to know that I still meant something to you… but I was stupid to think that you would-!”—he interrupts himself with a raspy sigh—“that’s just it. I’ve always been so fucking _stupid,_ especially when it comes to _you_.”

He slams the door shut with a bellowing metallic clang and abandons her to silence, to the fracturing pain in her chest, the dim sense of betrayal prodding her mind.

“But… you do mean something to me,” she murmurs, sinking back into her sheets as her stomach writhes in agony at the billowing emptiness inside of her.

 _I just don’t remember what_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sweeeeet here's ch5, an early update cause Nakamatoo on tumblr really likes this story.  
> Lemme know what you thought!

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there reader! Thanks for checking out my new project. I've been so psyched to write this, especially since it's my first mystery (or sorts)! If you liked it for any reason or every reason, please take the time to leave me a like and/or comment!


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